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(TMoiuii!  \Bttoi 
F.lectrotyped  and  Printed  by  C.  H.  Slmonds  &  Co. 
Boston,  Mas*..  U.  S.  A. 


To  My   Teacher  and  Friend 
George  Robert  Parkin 

SINCE  you  are  on  the  other  side  of  the 
world,  my  dear  Parkin,  I  must  offer  you  my 
new  book  without  your  leave.  This  is  not 
really  so  venturesome  as  it  may  seem.  You 
never  were  one  of  those  aloof  and  awesome 
Head  Masters,  who  exercise  a  petty  reign  of 
terror  over  the  effervescence  of  youth;  and  I 
cannot  recall  that  we  ever  tried  to  steal  a 
march  on  you, except  on  a  few  occasions  in  the 
history  of  the  school  or  of  your  own  life, when 
we  wished  to  surprise  you  with  some  token  of 
our  bashful  affection. 

When  this  page  comes  under  that  glowing 
eye,  which  has  since  compelled  so  many  audi- 
ences, in  so  many  places  larger  than  any 
schoolroom,   on   weightier   matters    than    any 

v 


£o  (T,rovac  liotrvt  jJavlUn 

school  discipline,  let  me  ask  you  to  recall  those 
occasions  long  ago,  and  to  think  of  this  prefa- 
tory letter  as  an  echo  of  that  happy  time.  I 
even  feel  myself  lapsing  (or  more  properly 
stiffening)  into  the  formal  style  of  an  address, 
to  be  read  to  you,  with  much  stumbling  and 
a  quaking  heart,  before  the  assembled  school. 
But  I  dare  say  you  will  find  it  none  the  worse 
on  that  account.  As  you  sit  now  turning  these 
leaves,  whether  in  London  or  South  Africa, 
you  must  pretend  that  you  are  still  in  the  chair 
behind  the  high  desk,  where  we  all  came  for 
counsel  and  reproof,  and  that  here  is  one  of 
your  boys  come  to  tender  you  an  offering 
long  overdue,  making  acknowledgment  of 
most  grateful  indebtedness  never  really  to  be 
repaid.  For  the  service  you  did  him  is,  next 
to  the  gift  of  life,  the  greatest  that  one  man 
can  render  another. 

Those  were  the  days  when  we  were  all 
young  together,  whether  at  Greek  or  football, 
tramping  for  Mayflowers  through  the  early 
spring  woods,  paddling  on  the  river  in  intoxi- 

vi 


£o  George  Hoticrt  JMrfciu 

eating  Junes,  or  snowshoeing  across  bitter 
drifts  in  the  perishing  December  wind,  — 
always  under  the  leadership  of  your  indomita- 
ble ardour.  In  that  golden  age  we  first  real- 
ized the  kinship  of  Nature,  whose  help  is  for 
ever  unfailing,  and  whose  praise  is  never  out- 
sung.  I  must  remind  you,  too,  of  those  hours 
in  the  class-room,  when  the  Mneid  was  often 
interrupted  by  the  Idyls  of  the  King  or 
The  Blessed  Damozel,  and  William  Morris 
or  Arnold  or  Mr.  Swinburne's  latest  lyric 
came  to  us  between  the  lines  of  Horace. 

I  shall  not  fasten  upon  you  the  heavy 
responsibility  of  having  turned  more  than  one 
young  scholar  aside  into  the  fascinating  and 
headlong  current  of  contemporary  poetry, 
never  to  emerge  again,  nor  of  having  helped 
to  make  anything  so  doubtful  as  a  minor  bard. 
It  is  certain,  however,  that  you  gave  us  what- 
ever solace  and  inspiration  there  is  in  the 
classics  and  in  modern  letters,  and  set  our 
feet  in  the  devious  aisles  of  the  enchanted 
groves  of  the  Muses.    And  I  for  one  have  to 

vii 


£o  <&totQt  i&otirrt  JJarfcfu 

thank  you  for  a  pleasure  in  life,  almost  the 
only  one,  that  does  not  fail. 

We  learned  from  you,  or  we  might  have 
learned,  to  be  zealous,  to  be  fair,  to  be  happy 
over  our  work,  to  love  only  what  is  beautiful 
and  of  good  report,  and  to  follow  the  truth 
at  all  hazards.  If  you  find  any  good,  then, 
in  these  pages,  take  much  of  the  credit  for  it 
to  yourself,  I  beg  you.  And  whatever  you 
come  upon  of  ill,  attribute  to  that  original 
perversity  for  which  our  grandsires  had  to 
make  allowance  in  their  theology,  and  from 
which  no  master  in  the  world  can  quite  free 
even  his  most  desirous  pupil. 

The  essays  which  go  to  make  up  this  volume 
were  written  at  different  times  during  the  past 
six  or  seven  years.  In  revising  them  for  pub- 
lication in  their  present  form,  a  good  deal 
that  was  purely  ephemeral  has  been  cut  away; 
so  that  while  they  may  not  appear  to  contain 
very  much  that  is  of  great  significance,  neither 
will  they,  I  hope,  be  found  altogether  trivial. 

Under  the  circumstances  of  their  produc- 

viii 


STo  &eorge  liobtrt  JSarttin 

tion,  they  could  scarcely  follow  any  coherent 
and  continuous  trend  of  thought.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  it  is  not  to  be  expected  that  a  book  of 
essays  should  do  this.  They  can  only  have 
whatever  unity  of  feeling  and  outlook  attaches 
to  the  writer's  philosophy,  as  it  passes  from 
day  to  day  through  the  changing  pageants  of 
Nature  or  through  the  varied  pomps  and 
vanities  of  this  delightful  world.  And  yet,  if 
I  must  be  my  own  apologist,  perhaps  I  may 
be  excused  for  assuming  that  no  work  of  the 
sort,  however  random  and  perishable,  will  be 
entirely  futile,  if  it  has  been  done  in  the  first 
place  with  loving  sincerity  and  conviction.  It 
will  have  in  the  final  analysis  some  way  of 
looking  at  life,  some  tendency  or  preference, 
which  in  a  more  studied  work  would  be  more 
formal,  but  not  therefore  necessarily  more 
true.  It  may  attract  only  a  handful  of  readers ; 
it  may  not  outlive  the  hour;  but  after  all,  that 
may  be  enough,  if  only  it  carry  with  it  some 
hint  of  the  experience  which  prompted  it. 
A  book  is  only  written  for  him  who  finds  it; 

ix 


STo  (RiovQt  Mobtvt  JJarftiu 

and  should  carry  to  the  finder  some  palpable 
or  even  intimate  revelation  of  the  man  who 
made  it.  It  is  as  if,  by  a  tone  of  the  voice  or 
a  turn  of  the  head,  a  stranger  should  suddenly 
appeal  to  us  as  a  comrade.  And  while  it  is 
true  that  the  offices  of  friendship  are  not  fully 
accomplished  until  we  have  eaten  our  bushel  of 
salt  together,  it  is  also  certain  that  the  flavour 
of  friendship  may  be  recognized  with  the 
smallest  grain.  A  book  may  be  a  cry  in  the 
night,  like  Carlyle's;  or  a  message  from  "  the 
god  of  the  wood,"  like  Emerson's;  or  a  song 
of  the  open,  like  Whitman's;  or  the  utterance 
of  a  scholar  like  Newman  from  the  schools  of 
ancient  learning;  or  it  may  be  no  more  than 
the  smiling  salutation  of  a  child  in  the  street. 
Let  him  receive  it  whom  it  may  serve. 

It  is  a  long  way  from  the  little  Canadian 
town  on  the  St.  John,  in  the  early  seventies, 
to  the  centres  of  the  world  in  the  beginning 
of  a  new  era;  but  it  is  good  to  remember  and 
to  take  courage.  And  while  we  who  always 
must   think   of   you   with    a   touch    of   hero- 

x 


£o  George  lioucrt  jjaviUu 

worship,  look  on  with  pride  at  your  achieve- 
ments in  that  larger  workroom  of  responsi- 
bility to  which  you  have  so  deservedly  come, 
—  while  we  kindle  as  of  old  at  your  unflinch- 
ing and  strenuous  eagerness,  —  I  hope  that 
you  will  be  able  to  read  with  satisfaction,  and 
with  some  little  pleasure,  these  latest  tasks 
which  I  bring  for  your  approval. 

School  will  not  keep  for  ever.  By  the  feel 
of  the  sun  it  must  be  already  past  noon.  Be- 
fore very  long  the  hour  must  strike  for  our 
dismissal  from  this  pleasant  and  airy  edifice, 
a  summons  less  welcome  than  the  four  o'clock 
cathedral  bell  in  that  leafy  Northern  city  in 
old  days,  and  we  shall  all  go  scattering  forth 
for  the  Great  Re-creation.  Before  that  time 
arrives,  only  let  me  know  that,  in  your  impar- 
tial and  exacting  judgment,  I  have  not  alto- 
gether failed,  and  I  shall  await  the  Finals 
with  more  confidence  than  most  mortals  dare 
enjoy. 

B.   C. 

New  York,  June,  IQOJ. 

xi 


Contents 


w 

F*GF 

The  Art  of  Life i 

On  Being  Strenuous 

i          •         -  < 

II 

The  Crime  of  Ugliness 

23 

Miracles  and   Metaphors 

33 

Haste  and  Waste           .          , 

41 

At  the  Coming  of  Spring 

5» 

The  Vernal  Ides . 

6i 

The  Seed  of  Success    . 

7i 

Fact  and  Fancy    . 

8i 

Easter  Eve .         .         .         i 

91 

The  Cost  of  Beauty     .         . 

IOI 

Rhythm       .... 

109 

April  in  Town    . 

119 

Careless  Nature    . 

125 

The  Wandering  Word  „ 

131 

The  Friendship  of  Nature 

139 

Subconscious  Art . 

H5 

Seaboard  and  Hillward 

i55 

The  Courtesy  of  Nature 

163 

The  Luxury  of  Being  Poor 

173 

"  Solitary  the  Thrush  " 

.         183 

i  rees  •          •          •          • 

i 

191 

<£on  tents 


The   Ritual  of  Nature   . 

Concerning  Pride . 

Of  Breeding 

Of  Serenity 

Play    .... 

The  Scarlet  of  the  Year 

Good   Fortune 

The  Debauchery  of  Mood 

Of  Moderation     . 

Atmosphere .         .         . 


PAGE 

20 1 

21  I 
221 

231 

239 
247 

263 

271 

281 

289 


%$t  grt  of  ILtfe 


EJe  0ft  of  fife 


We  have  come  to  look  upon  art  and  life  as 
separate  things.  We  have  come  to  think  of 
art  as  a  peculiar  form  of  activity  practised  by 
a  very  few  and  enjoyed  by  a  few  more.  There 
is  a  tacit  belief  in  the  bottom  of  the  mind  of 
most  of  us  that  art  really  has  not  very  much 
to  do  with  life.  Even  those  who  love  art  well 
are  shaken  in  their  faith  at  times  by  the  uni- 
versal skepticism  around  them.  They  are  not 
unwilling  to  speak  deprecatingly  of  art  as  a 
cult,  to  make  concessions  to  the  average  stand- 
ard of  thought;  they  help  to  put  art  farther 
and  farther  away  from  life. 

But  what  is  the  reason  of  this  divorce  of 
art  from  life?  Is  it  only  that  we  feel  the  too 
frequent  lack  of  vitality  in  art?     As  every- 

3 


Stye  Irtnsfttp  of  Itf  atmr* 

day  people  we  cannot  help  seeing  that  a  great 
deal  of  artistic  energy  is  expended  idly  away 
from  the  main  issues  of  life.  The  original  artis- 
tic sin  was  the  conception  of  art  as  something 
aloof  and  exceptional;  and  when  once  that 
pernicious  poison  had  entered  the  human  soul, 
naturally  there  were  not  a  few  adherents  to 
the  sect  of  the  dreamers.  Their  number  in- 
creased; the  estrangement  between  life  and  art 
grew;  the  devotees  of  expression  even  became 
supercilious  and  fanatical  in  their  sectarian- 
ism; until  to-day  the  name  artist  is  a  syno- 
nym for  the  impractical  bystander,  the  man  of 
inaction,  the  contemplator  of  the  actual,  the 
workman  who  is  a  stranger  among  equals.  It 
is  nothing  new  to  say  that  this  vicious  secession 
of  one  state  of  mind  from  the  great  republic 
of  thought  has  worked  sorry  havoc  to  art. 
One  sees  that  only  too  clearly  every  day  in  the 
really  slight  hold  which  art  has  on  the  public. 
In  the  days  of  the  blessed  innocence  of  art  it 
never  occurred  to  the  artist  that  he  was  not 
a  layman  like  the  rest  of  his  toiling  fellows. 

4 


&l)t  Urt  of  mn 

But  if  the  evil  to  art  was  great,  the  evil  to 
life  was  not  less  so.  The  idea  that  art  is  some- 
thing that  does  not  quite  concern  us  in  our 
every-day  affairs,  at  last  breeds  the  belief  that 
in  a  natural  state  we  should  have  no  need  of 
art.  The  truth  is  that  in  a  natural  state  we 
should  never  know  what  art  means,  as  distinct 
from  life.  Art  is  expression,  we  say.  Very 
well,  but  nothing  we  can  do  or  say  can  possibly 
be  done  or  said  without  expression,  without 
revealing  the  person  behind  the  action  and 
the  word.  You  lift  a  finger  or  drop  an  inflec- 
tion, and  the  stranger  in  the  room  has  gathered 
a  volume  of  characteristics  of  your  personality. 
Yet  expression  is  more  than  this;  it  is  part  of 
our  work,  too.  Consider  the  truth  of  this 
statement,  that  nothing  we  do  or  say  can  be 
without  expression;  and  then  see  how  all  trade 
and  commerce  and  manufacture,  —  the  whole 
conduct  of  civilization,  —  has  its  artistic  as- 
pect. And  because  of  the  original  artistic 
sin,  the  divorce  of  art  from  life,  we  suffer  in 
a  life  without  joy.    For  work,  like  art,  is  noth- 

5 


ing  but  natural  function,  and  the  natural  joy 
of  the  one  is  as  great  as  the  natural  joy  of  the 
other;  for  they  are  only  different  aspects  of 
the  same  energy,  and  not  different  kinds  of 
energy. 

No  one  ever  heard  of  an  artist  complaining 
of  the  tedium  of  his  work.  Of  course  not;  for 
him  art  and  work  are  one;  he  tastes  the  blessed 
joy  of  a  natural  inclination  having  free  play. 
He  is  expressing  himself  after  his  kind,  as 
nature  intended.  On  the  other  hand,  how 
often  does  one  hear  a  toiler  (as  the  non-artistic 
worker  is  called)  rejoicing  in  his  work?  His 
life  is  one  long  complaint.  Why?  Because 
false  conditions  and  false  ideals  have  so  com- 
pletely separated  his  work  from  all  artistic 
possibility.  It  has  been  made  impossible  for 
him  to  find  any  expression  for  himself  in  his 
work.  The  hands  must  keep  their  aimless, 
weary  energy,  while  the  soul  is  stifled  for  an 
outlet. 

"  The  heart  in  the  work  "  is  not  a  motto  for 
the  artist  alone;  it  is  for  the  labourer  as  well. 

6 


&$t  &rt  of  Hift 

With  that  possibility  before  him,  the  meanest 
toiler  may  grow  beautiful;  without  it,  the 
veriest  giant  of  energy  will  grow  petty  and 
warped  and  sad.  The  commonest  work  is 
ennobling  when  it  provides  any  avenue  of  ex- 
pression for  the  spirit,  any  exit  for  the  heavy, 
struggling,  ambitious  human  heart  out  of  its 
prison  house  of  silence  into  the  sunshine  of  fel- 
lowship. Set  me  a  task  in  which  I  can  put 
something  of  my  very  self,  and  it  is  task  no 
longer;    it  is  a  joy;    it  is  art. 

To  make  such  a  condition  of  work  universal 
seems  to  me  a  sufficient  aim  for  modern  en- 
deavour. How  soon  things  would  cease  to  be 
ugly  and  become  beautiful,  if  only  every 
stroke  of  work  in  the  world  had  some  expres- 
sion in  it!  Of  course,  we  cannot  have  that 
under  existing  conditions.  Any  improvement 
of  society  in  that  direction  implies  a  cure  more 
radical  than  has  yet  been  attempted.  It  im- 
plies freedom  for  the  common  worker  as  well 
as  freedom  for  the  thinker  and  artist.  Not 
until  the  term  artisan  has  come  to  be  as  hon- 


Z$t  itiusljiji  of  Nature 

ourable  as  the  term  artist  will  we  have  real 
freedom.  But  I  am  afraid  that  with  all  our 
talk  of  freedom  very  few  of  us  believe  in  it, 
after  all.  We  seem  to  think  it  is  dangerous. 
But  freedom  is  not  an  acquisition  of  power; 
it  is  merely  the  disimprisonment  of  spirit. 
And  not  to  believe  in  freedom  is  to  believe  in 
the  ultimate  evil  of  the  spirit.  For  if  the  good 
is  stronger  than  the  bad,  the  less  repression 
we  have  the  better.  Since  it  is  impossible  to 
discriminate  between  them,  we  can  only  un- 
lock the  doors  and  call  forth  every  human 
energy,  —  give  it  opportunity,  give  it  work 
in  which  there  is  some  chance  for  expression, 
—  believing  that  the  better  powers  will  tri- 
umph over  the  worse. 

The  art  of  life,  then,  is  to  make  life  and  art 
one,  so  far  as  we  can,  for  ourselves  and  for 
others,  —  to  find,  if  possible,  the  occupation 
in  which  we  can  put  something  of  self.  So 
should  gladness  and  content  come  back  to 
earth.  But  now,  with  the  body  made  a  slave 
to  machinery,  and  the  spirit  defrauded  of  any 

8 


2Tt)C  ^tt  of  Hifc 


S 


scope  for  its  pent-up  force,  we  have  nothin 
to  hope  for  in  the  industrial  world;  and  the 
breach  between  art  and  life  will  go  on  widen- 
ing until  labour  is  utterly  brutalized  and  art 
utterly  emasculated. 


<&n  Being  Strenuous 


(§n  JSctnjj  Strenuous 


In  Lafcadio  Hearn's  book,  "  In  Ghostly 
Japan,"  there  is  a  remarkable  chapter  on  silk- 
worms. 

"  In  Numi's  neighbourhood,  where  there 
are  plenty  of  mulberry-trees,  many  families 
keep  silkworms.  ...  It  is  curious  to  see  hun- 
dreds of  caterpillars  feeding  all  together  in 
one  tray,  and  to  hear  the  soft,  papery  noise 
which  they  make  while  gnawing  their  mul- 
berry leaves.  As  they  approach  maturity  the 
creatures  need  almost  constant  attention.  At 
brief  intervals  some  expert  visits  each  tray  to 
inspect  progress,  picks  up  the  plumpest  feed- 
ers, and  decides  by  gently  rolling  them  between 
his  forefinger  and  thumb,  which  are  ready  to 

*3 


Wtyt  liiusljtp  of  TSTatttre 

spin.  ...  A  few  only  of  the  best  are  suffered 
to  emerge  from  their  silky  sleep  —  the  selected 
breeders.  They  have  beautiful  wings,  but  can- 
not use  them.  They  have  mouths,  but  do  not 
eat.  They  only  pair,  lay  eggs,  and  die.  For 
thousands  of  years  their  race  has  been  so  well 
cared  for  that  it  can  no  longer  take  care  of 
itself." 

The  moral  to  be  deduced  from  this  instance 
is  obvious.  Compare  with  the  silkworms  our 
mortal  selves.  These  happy  grubs  are  tended 
by  a  kindly  boy,  who  supplies  their  every 
need;  they  have  not  a  wish  unsatisfied.  By  a 
sort  of  miracle,  a  supernatural  power  (as  it 
would  seem  to  them) ,  they  have  been  removed 
from  the  field  of  competition.  For  them  the 
struggle  for  existence  no  longer  exists.  One 
imagines  that  if  they  were  capable  of  prayer 
they  could  ask  no  more  perfect  gift  than  that 
which  has  been  bestowed  upon  them  —  im- 
munity from  strife  and  security  in  the  com- 
forts of  existence.  What  more  do  we  our- 
selves ask?    Our  prayer  is  almost  never  that 

14 


<&u  Eeftt0  Strenuous 

we  may  persist,  endure,  and  overcome,  but 
rather  that  we  may  be  removed  by  a  kindly 
providence  from  the  region  of  struggle  to 
some  benign  sphere  where  all  the  delights  of 
life  may  fall  to  our  lot  without  an  effort. 

It  is  probably  an  idle  and  wicked  dream. 
Witness  the  case  of  the  silkworms.  If  you 
would  form  some  notion  of  what  the  imagined 
heaven  might  do  for  us,  consider  the  case  of 
our  small  friends  among  the  mulberry  leaves. 
When  we  think  of  the  lilies  of  the  field,  and 
promise  ourselves  a  state  like  theirs  according 
to  the  word,  "  Shall  He  not  much  more  clothe 
you,  O  ye  of  little  faith?'  we  are  prone  to 
forget  that  every  moment  of  their  life  for 
untold  ages  has  been  filled  with  a  strenuous 
purpose,  quiet  and  unperceived,  yet  none  the 
less  strong  on  that  account.  Yes,  we  may  have 
the  motive  and  the  vesture  of  our  little  sisters 
of  the  field,  but  we  must  have  their  tenacity 
and  their  indomitable  endurance  as  well.  To 
cease  to  strive  is  to  begin  to  degenerate.  As 
Mr.  Hearn  says: 

»5 


2Tfje  fttnsl)ij)  of  Nature 

"  An  early  stage  of  that  degeneration  would 
be  represented  by  total  incapacity  to  help  our- 
selves —  then  we  should  begin  to  lose  the  use 
of  our  higher  sense  organs  —  later  on,  the 
brain  would  shrink  to  a  vanishing  pin-point  of 
matter;  still  later  we  should  dwindle  into 
mere  amorphous  sacs,  mere  blind  stomachs. 
Such  would  be  the  physical  consequence  of 
that  kind  of  divine  love  which  we  so  lazily 
wish  for.  The  longing  for  perpetual  bliss  and 
perpetual  peace  might  well  seem  a  malevolent 
inspiration  from  the  lords  of  death  and  dark- 
ness." 

Then  follow  these  memorable  sentences: 
"  All  life  that  feels  and  thinks  has  been,  and 
can  continue  to  be,  only  as  the  product  of 
struggle  and  pain  —  only  as  the  outcome  of 
endless  battle  with  the  Powers  of  the  Universe. 
And  cosmic  law  is  uncompromising.  What- 
ever organ  ceases  to  know  pain  —  whatever 
faculty  ceases  to  be  used  under  the  stimulus  of 
pain  —  must  also  cease  to  exist.  Let  pain  and 
its  effort  be  suspended,  and  life  must  shrink 

16 


<&n  WtiviQ  Strenuous 

back,    first    into    protoplastic    shapelessness, 
thereafter  into  dust." 

Then  we  turn  to  a  modern  poet,  and  read: 

"  Calm  soul  of  all  things  !   make  it  mine 
To  feel,  amid  the  city's  jar, 
That  there  abides  a  peace  of  thine, 
Man  did  not  make  and  cannot  mar. 

"  The  will  to  neither  strive  nor  cry, 

The  power  to  feel  with  others  give  ! 
Calm,  calm  me  more  !   nor  let  me  die, 
Before  I  have  begun  to  live." 

How  is  one  to  reconcile  Arnold's  prayer 
for  calm  with  the  remorseless  law  of  perpetual 
trial,  perpetual  endeavour?  Is  there  indeed, 
a  peace  "  man  did  not  make  and  cannot  mar?  ' 
Is  the  tremendous  strain  of  modern  life,  its 
killing  excitement,  its  relentless  rush,  its 
breathless  haste,  its  eager  and  ruthless  com- 
petition, a  part  of  the  inevitable  development 
of  man's  existence?  Or  should  we  combat 
these  things  as  temporary  aberrations  from 
the  normal?    Shall  I  serve  my  hour  and  gen- 

17 


art)*  lunaJjij)  of  Nature 

eration  best  by  combating  the  idea  of  strife 
and  by  insisting  on  peace  and  repose  in  my 
own  surroundings  or  by  entering  heart  and 
mind  into  the  race  and  battle  of  the  strong? 
Certainly  I  shall  best  serve  my  fellows  by  fol- 
lowing my  own  conviction  in  the  matter. 
That  at  least  is  sure ;  that  at  least  is  the  cosmic 
law;  to  each  individual  his  own  ideal  and 
the  will  to  follow  it.  But  how  to  know  in 
the  first  place?  How  to  tell  the  best  ideal 
from  the  second  best?  Or  is  there,  perhaps, 
some  way  of  harmonizing  both  ideals  in  a 
single  line  of  action? 

In  that  great  pageant  of  the  seasons  which 
passes  by  our  door  year  after  year,  in  the 
myriad  changes  of  the  wonderful  spectacle 
of  this  greening  and  blanching  orb,  in  all  the 
processes  of  that  apparition  we  call  Nature, 
do  I  not  see  both  strife  and  calm  exemplified? 
That  "  calm  soul  of  all  things,"  which  Arnold 
invokes,  is  really  in  constant  strife.  Every 
moment  the  apparent  calm  of  nature  covers  a 
relentless   battle    for   existence,    tribe   against 

18 


<Dn  iJrtufi  Strenuous 

tribe,  species  against  species ;  and  the  price  of 
life  in  unceasing  struggle,  the  whole  earth 
groaning  and  travailing  together.  So  that 
the  appearance  of  calm  which  settles  on  the 
face  of  our  mother  earth,  in  the  long,  slow 
summer  afternoon,  is  in  reality  but  the  veil 
and  deception  of  the  truth.  Is  it?  Or  may 
we  think  that  the  unaccounted  powers  of  life 
at  play  through  the  world  partake  of  a  uni- 
versal peace  as  well  as  of  a  universal  strain? 

How  is  it  with  ourselves?  Is  there  any  man 
who  can  wholly  possess  his  heart  in  patience? 
Is  there  any  who  must  always  be  striving?  Is 
it  not  rather  true  that  to  the  most  strenuous  of 
us  there  come  fleeting  moments  when  calm 
and  self-possession  seem  good?  And  does 
there  live  the  most  confirmed  quietist  who  has 
not  at  times  been  roused  to  action  by  love  or 
patriotism  or  generous  indignation? 

It  may  very  well  happen  that  circumstances 
have  placed  you  in  the  forefront  of  the  fight, 
where  all  your  splendid  life  long  you  shall 
have  never  a  minute  to  call  your  own,  where 

19 


&fje  ftiusijil)  of  Nature 

you  shall  never  once  be  able  to  rest  or  meditate 
or  sun  your  spirit  in  a  basking  hour  of  leisure. 
Complain  not.  This  is  the  fortune  of  the 
captains  of  humanity;  be  glad  the  good  God 
has  laid  upon  you  a  work  as  great  as  your 
powers.  The  stern  struggle  and  victorious 
achievement  can  never  be  cramping  to  the 
soul.  And  the  vast  cisterns  of  repose  may  be 
opened  to  you  in  another  incarnation;  indeed 
they  were  possibly  yours  long  since  and  from 
them  you  have  derived  this  burning  energy. 

It  may  be,  on  the  other  hand,  that  inactive 
doubt  and  timorous  incertitude  beset  me,  and 
that  I  am  becoming  stale  for  lack  of  use. 
Never  mind,  the  hour  will  one  day  strike, 
and  the  lethargic  torpor  of  temperamental  in- 
capacity will  be  broken  up,  and  I  shall  be 
remoulded  into  something  more  trenchant  and 
available  for  the  forwarding  of  beneficent 
designs. 

Meanwhile  for  both  of  us,  it  may  be,  we 
shall  find  solace  in  a  wise  philosophic  blending 
of  the  two  ideals.     It  is  somehow  possible, 

20 


<®n  iiting  Stvcuuous 

I  think,  to  be  as  strenuous  and  efficient  as 
nature  herself  in  action,  and  yet  to  have  in 
mind  always,  as  a  standard  of  normal  being, 
the  inflexible  serenity  of  the  wheeling  sun. 


ai 


Cfie  Crime  of  ^gltness 


Cije  Crime  of  Mfllineas 


ONE  hardly  assents  without  question  to  the 
statement  that  ugliness  is  a  crime.  That  the 
love  of  beauty  is  a  pleasure  we  know,  but  why 
place  it  among  the  moral  obligations?  Is  it 
not  straining  the  use  of  language  a  little  to 
speak  of  the  morality  or  immorality  of  inani- 
mate objects?  Beauty  is  nothing  but  a  condi- 
tion of  matter.  And  how  can  matter  be  either 
good  or  evil?  Surely  beauty  is  one  of  the 
things  we  may  leave  outside  the  pale  of  ethics! 

Beauty,  however,  is  really  only  another 
name  for  goodness,  and  the  maintenance  of 
beauty  is  as  much  a  moral  duty  as  the  main- 
tenance of  goodness.  And  I  come  to  believe 
this  in  the  following  way: 

I    perceive   that  we   call   things   beautiful 

*5 


5Tije  Irtugtjip  of  ISTattttf 

which  are  most  pleasing  to  our  senses  at  their 
best,  just  as  we  call  things  good  which  are 
most  satisfying  to  our  emotional  nature  at  its 
best,  and  still  other  things  true  which  con- 
form to  the  requirements  of  our  mental  nature. 
You  may,  if  you  wish,  say  that  we  have  a 
special  faculty  for  the  apprehension  of  truth, 
which  we  call  reason ;  that  we  have  a  special 
faculty  for  the  perception  of  right  and  wrong, 
which  we  call  conscience;  and  so  you  may 
say,  too,  that  we  have  a  special  faculty  for  the 
appreciation  of  beauty,  which  we  call  taste,  for 
want  of  a  better  name. 

Again,  since  I  cannot  make  any  discrimina- 
tion between  my  three  natures,  nor  call  one 
higher  or  nobler  than  the  others,  but  am  com- 
pelled to  do  equal  reverence  to  body,  mind, 
and  soul,  paying  them  equal  heed  and  equal 
care,  I  conclude  that  taste  and  conscience  and 
reason  are  of  equal  importance,  equally  to  be 
obeyed.  I  know,  moreover,  that  happiness 
only  results  from  the  exercise  of  our  faculties, 
and  the  highest  happiness  only  results  from 

26 


Etjr  Crime  of  JBLQUntn* 

the  equal  exercise  of  all  our  faculties  to  a 
normal  degree  in  a  normal  way.  When  I 
exercise  my  reason,  I  am  controlling  and 
directing  my  curiosity  in  order  to  arrive  at 
the  truth;  for  in  no  other  way  can  I  attain 
pleasure  or  happiness  of  mind.  When  I  exer- 
cise my  conscience,  I  am  controlling  and 
directing  my  emotions,  in  order  to  attain  and 
preserve  the  good,  for  I  cannot  have  happiness 
of  soul  in  any  other  way.  And  when  I  exer- 
cise my  taste,  I  am  controlling  and  directing 
the  work  of  my  hands  and  the  acts  of  my 
body  in  sue1'  2  way  as  to  produce  the  most 
beautiful  result.  I  know  that  unless  I  am 
allowed  to  work  in  this  way,  I  can  have  no  joy 
in  my  work. 

Now  furthermore  I  may  conclude,  surely, 
that  joy  in  one's  work,  pleasure  in  one's  emo- 
tions, and  satisfaction  in  one's  thoughts,  go  to 
make  up  the  sum  of  happiness.  And  I  am 
profoundly  skeptical  of  the  validity  of  any 
theory  of  conduct  which  can  countenance  the 
cultivation  of  any  one  of  these  forms  of  hap- 

27 


&l)t  Zunsi)tj)  of  Xatttre 

piness  at  the  expense  of  the  others.  If  it  were 
not  true  that  we  can  only  reach  happiness  by 
a  degree  of  cultivation  of  all  our  faculties, 
there  would  certainly  be  many  more  happy 
people  in  the  world.  All  people  who  culti- 
vate their  mind  assiduously  and  exclusively 
would  be  happy,  and  all  those  who  cultivate 
their  taste,  with  no  regard  to  thought  or  sin- 
cerity of  emotion,  would  be  happy.  But  this 
is  not  the  case.  And  more  than  that,  we  per- 
ceive that  piety  is  by  no  means  a  sure  bringer 
of  happiness.  The  blameless  life  is  often  hid- 
den under  a  mask  of  woebegone  unloveliness. 
Our  good  friends  are  not  happy  because  they 
have  made  the  mistake  of  thinking  goodness 
the  only  aspect  of  the  universe,  whereas  it  is 
only  one  of  the  three  aspects.  God  does  not 
exist  as  goodness  alone;  any  more  than  man 
exists  as  soul  alone;  but  He  exists  as  beauty 
and  truth  also,  just  as  man  also  exists  as  body 
and   mind. 

We  are  not  constituted  to  find  pleasure  in 
falsehood  or  wrong,  however  much  our  111- 

28 


STije  ©rime  of  ^lintss 

balanced  natures  may  seem  to  do  so  at  times. 
There  is  always  within  us  the  capacity  for  ap- 
proving what  is  noble  and  for  believing  what 
is  true.  No  more  are  we  constituted  for  de- 
riving benefit  from  what  is  ugly,  however  we 
may  tolerate  it.  For  once  show  us  something 
beautiful  in  its  place,  and  instantly  we  are 
influenced  by  it.  Now  certainly  the  love  of 
truth  and  the  love  of  goodness  are  great  vir- 
tues; yet  they  are  no  greater,  I  take  it,  than 
the  love  of  beauty.  And  when  we  allow  our- 
selves to  act  without  regard  for  truth  and 
goodness,  our  acts  become  injurious  to  our 
fellow  beings,  and  are  called  crimes.  For  the 
same  reason  I  call  ugliness,  or  the  creation 
of  what  is  not  beautiful,  a  crime.  That  it  is 
not  so  considered  generally  is  only  too  evi- 
dent. When  any  one  creates  a  beautiful  ob- 
ject he  is  thought  to  have  added  to  our  luxu- 
ries. When  a  millionaire  gives  a  library  to  a 
town,  he  is  even  thought  to  have  conferred  a 
benefit  upon  the  community.  This,  however, 
is  rather  from  the  idea  that  townspeople  are 

29 


W§t  Ztfusljip  of  Ttfatttre 

getting  something  for  nothing  than  from  any 
sense  of  the  beauty  of  their  town  being  en- 
hanced. Indeed,  the  library  is  too  often  but 
another  crime  against  taste.  But  any  general 
sense  of  the  value  of  beauty  or  any  general 
sense  of  the  hurtfulness  of  ugliness,  I  fear, 
we  shall  look  for  in  vain.  Yet  that  is  not 
true,  either;  for  we  all  feel  the  harm  of  ugli- 
ness. Only  we  have  not  been  taught  to  recog- 
nize it  as  an  offence  against  the  public  wel- 
fare. The  only  instance  of  such  recognition 
in  recent  days  is  the  legislation  against  the 
disfigurement  of  the  landscape  with  adver- 
tising signs.  Certainly  the  perpetration  of 
these  hideous  enormities  all  over  the  fair  earth 
cannot  be  considered  a  crime  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  term ;  they  cause  no  material  injury 
to  any  one.  Yet  they  do  offend  every  one  of 
us,  whether  we  are  conscious  of  it  or  not;  and 
that  common,  widespread  injury,  that  hurt  to 
every  man's  innate  sense  of  beauty,  is  of  the 
very  nature  and  essence  of  crime.    Public  art, 


30 


Wtyt  dtvimt  of  WQlinttiu 

or  rather  public  work,  is  much  more  rightly 
the  subject  of  censorship  than  private  morals. 

Of  course,  the  cure  for  the  disease  does  not 
lie  in  censorship  at  all ;  it  lies  in  securing  free- 
dom for  the  workman.  The  appalling  ugli- 
ness of  our  civilization  in  the  mass,  its  monot- 
ony, its  lack  of  cheerfulness,  is  only  the  reflec- 
tion of  our  own  lack  of  joy  and  elasticity.  Our 
works  are  hideous,  because  we  have  no  pleas- 
ure in  them ;  and  we  have  no  pleasure  in  them, 
because  we  are  slaves  to  commercialism. 

But  we  must  not  scold.  Only  to  rail  against 
conditions  that  seem  false  and  unlovely,  is  to 
be  unlovely  and  false  one's  self.  If  we  do 
not  like  things  as  they  are,  and  do  not  believe 
in  them,  let  us  change  them.  Let  us  go  about 
it  with  some  degree  of  good  nature  and  tact; 
for  tact  is  only  good  taste  in  matters  of  con- 
duct. If  ever  a  burden  of  conviction  hurries 
us  away  into  angry  speech,  let  us  repent  of  our 
haste.  We  shall  accomplish  little  for  the  good 
cause  of  beauty  by  the  sacrifice  of  beauty  in 
our  own  works  and  words. 

3i 


piracies  antr  ^letapfjors 


jftf  hmJea  atrtr  iHetapijore 


NOT  the  spring  only  is  the  time  of  miracles 
in  the  natural  world,  but  the  year  round,  day 
and  night.  The  moon  comes  up  behind  the 
spruce-trees  like  a  great  bubble  of  crimson 
glass,  swelling  and  rolling  slowly  southward, 
until  it  is  detached  ever  so  imperceptibly 
from  the  edges  of  the  dark  hill-caldron  where 
it  was  born,  and  floats  away  toward  the  bluish 
roof  of  stars.  When  the  trees  have  done 
their  gracious  tasks  of  summer,  gradually 
they  suffer  change  from  one  glory  to  another, 
put  off  the  green,  put  on  the  festal  liveries  of 
autumn,  sanguine  and  yellow  and  bronze. 
How  is  the  transformation  accomplished? 
And  all  the  teeming  ephemeral  creatures  of 
marsh  and  twilight,  what  becomes  of  them, 

35 


&t)t  Isinsfjfj)  of  TJCatttre 

when  the  time  of  croaking  and  buzzing  and 
zizzing  is  over?  Where  do  they  go  and  how 
do  they  return? 

These  are  child's  questions.  Science  knows 
many  things  about  them,  and  by  and  by  will 
tell  us  more.  But  always,  even  to  science, 
there  is  a  margin  of  unknown  which  makes 
the  known  seem  to  wear  the  guise  of  the  mi- 
raculous ;  while  for  the  humbler  eyes  of  the 
toiling  world  the  lovely  ordered  rotations  of 
nature  must  keep  their  actually  miraculous 
seeming  still. 

It  is  a  religious  feeling,  this  special  love  of 
the  natural  world,  and  entirely  modern.  Per- 
haps it  is  our  contribution  to  the  evolution 
of  spirit  through  spheres  of  religion,  our  step 
in  the  long  process  of  emancipation,  as  little 
by  little  we  grow  toward  that  service  which  is 
perfect  freedom.  Lanier  has  a  significant 
paragraph  in  one  of  his  lately  published  pa- 
pers, which  bears  on  this  consideration. 

"  Nothing  strikes  the  thoughtful  observer 
of  modern  literature  more  quickly  or  more 

36 


jWraclrs  auti  JHetajjfjots 

forcibly  than  the  great  yearning  therein  dis- 
played for  intimate  companionship  with 
nature.  And  this  yearning,  mark,  justifies  it- 
self upon  far  other  authority  than  that  which 
one  finds  in,  for  example,  the  Greek  nature- 
seeking.  Granted  the  instinctive  reverence  for 
nature  common  to  both  parties:  The  Greek 
believed  the  stream  to  be  inhabited  by  a 
nymph,  and  the  stream  was  wonderful  to  him 
because  of  this  nymph,  but  the  modern  man 
believes  no  such  thing.  One  has  appeared  who 
continually  cried  love,  love,  love  —  love  God, 
love  neighbours,  and  these  '  neighbours '  have 
come  to  be  not  only  men-neighbours,  but 
tree-neighbours,  river-neighbours,  star-neigh- 
bours." 

I  am  not  quite  sure  that  the  Greek's  per- 
sonification of  the  stream  was  so  different 
from  our  own;  I  fancy  his  imaginary  divinity 
in  it  was  much  the  same  as  ours;  but  we  are 
glad  to  extend  that  universal  gospel  of  love 
to  our  patient  fellows  in  the  sub-human  do- 
minions and  to  the  half-animate  and   inani- 

37 


K^t  ftinsijftf  of  Nature 

mate  apparitions  of  beauty  in  a  still  lower 
realm. 

Then  there  are  the  miracles  of  art,  not  so 
common  as  those  of  nature,  more  clouded  by 
failures  and  mistakes,  but  just  as  marvellous, 
just  as  potent,  and  more  significant  as  well. 
There  comes  a  master,  unheralded,  from  an 
obscure  corner  of  the  globe;  the  clay  is  liv- 
ing in  his  hands,  or  the  colours  take  life  at 
his  touch,  or  he  marshals  the  tones  and  sylla- 
bles of  sound,  and  at  once  a  new  creation 
springs  into  almost  immortal  existence  for  our 
delighted  senses.  The  tune  or  the  story 
spreads  across  two  continents  like  the  sun,  and 
every  mortal  heart  beats  faster  for  keen  zest, 
renewed  and  invigorated  as  at  some  miracle 
of  nature.  Our  enjoyment  of  art  is  a  religion, 
too,  for  it  is  the  worship  of  the  manifestations 
of  spirit  taking  shape  in  forms  of  beauty,  just 
as  our  enjoyment  of  nature  is  the  worship  of 
spirit  manifested  in  the  plasticity  of  sap  and 
cell,  —  the  lovely  forms  of  the  outer  world. 

These  two  religions  are  the  worship  of  na- 

38 


i-Hfvadrs  autr  i^ttapjjore 

ture  and  the  worship  of  art,  —  the  reverence 
of  the  form  and  the  adoration  of  the  spirit 
behind  the  form.  Art,  if  you  care  to  say  so, 
is  all  made  of  metaphors,  —  is  itself  the  uni- 
versal metaphor  of  the  soul.  And  who  shall 
prove  that  nature  is  not  a  metaphor,  too?  The 
metaphor  of  miracles  in  nature  is  only  sup- 
plemented by  the  miracle  of  metaphors  in 
art.  To  each  this  striving,  diligent,  eager  soul 
in  us  gives  allegiance. 


39 


Haste  anti  5^aste 


iiaste  atrtr  fflaztt 


It  is  a  common  dictum  of  proverbial  phi- 
losophy that  "  haste  makes  waste,"  that  in 
hurry  we  rush  upon  confusion  and  miss  our 
aim,  making  less  progress  than  the  tardy.  But 
it  is  not  so  commonly  recognized  that  haste 
really  is  waste,  that  it  not  only  causes  entangle- 
ment of  affairs  but  wrecks  the  individuality 
as  well.  Haste  is  the  fever  of  power,  a  malaria 
of  the  soul;  and  you  will  find  that  the  great 
characters  of  the  earth,  in  history  or  in  our 
own  day,  are  those  who  have  been  able  to  hold 
themselves  undistracted  and  undismayed,  — 
without  haste.  They  have  had  that  sanity  or 
balance  of  mind  which  could  perceive  the 
futility  of  hurry  and  the  ultimate  triumph  of 
serene  endeavour.    They  never  allowed  them- 

43 


3Ti)t  Ziinssijij]  of  Nature 

selves  to  be  flustered,  there  was  nothing  in  their 
blood  of  the  "  fluttered  folk  and  wild."  Each 
moment  was  sufficient  for  itself  and  its  task. 
If  there  was  more  to  do  in  an  hour  than  hu- 
man force  could  accomplish,  then  it  must 
wait  the  next  hour;  one  thing  only  was  cer- 
tain, no  accumulation  of  duties  and  obliga- 
tions must  be  allowed  to  astound  the  spirit  for 
an  instant.  For  the  spirit,  the  central  power 
within  us,  our  self's  very  self,  is  in  its  essence 
and  in  its  quality  if  not  in  reality  eternal,  and, 
when  we  do  not  hurry  it,  dwells  in  eternity 
amid  the  fleeting  minutes  and  shows  of  time. 
This  is  not  the  frothy  grist  of  fanciful  preci- 
osity; it  is  common  truth.  Think  for  a  mo- 
ment. Stop  now,  as  you  are  reading  this 
recent  volume,  and  notice  how  absolutely  un- 
hurried and  unperturbed  your  inmost  spirit 
may  be.  True,  you  have  to  hurry  at  times. 
You  may  have  had  to  run  for  your  train,  or 
you  may  be  late  for  dinner,  you  may  have  a 
stint  of  work  to  finish  against  time.  The  con- 
sciousness of  this  has  not  only  made  you  hurry 

44 


Tl?astc  autr  21las$tc 

your  steps,  it  has  made  you  hurry  your  soul. 
That  is  wrong.  No  matter  how  much  of  a 
hurry  we  may  be  in  upon  occasion,  there  is 
always  the  central  consciousness  which  we 
must  try  to  control  and  keep  undisturbed. 
Now,  forget  your  haste,  just  for  a  second  or 
two,  let  go,  stop  pushing  the  train  you  are 
riding  in,  stop  trying  to  do  all  your  work  at 
once;  and  perceive  how  deliberate,  how  regal 
and  indolent  your  soul  is,  how  sure  of  itself, 
how  indifferent  to  the  petty  chances  of  punc- 
tuality or  accomplished  toil. 

Here  and  to-day  we  cannot  live  as  our 
fathers  used.  We  cannot  escape  the  pressure 
of  modern  life  altogether,  mitigate  it  as  we 
may.  But  even  supposing  that  you  are  under 
the  necessity  of  strain  in  your  occupation,  that 
your  hours  are  long  and  your  work  exacting, 
nothing  can  excuse  haste  or  hastiness.  It  seems 
as  if  there  were  two  selves,  —  the  lower 
humble,  obedient,  toiling  self,  who  occupies 
your  body,  sits  in  it  at  the  table,  rides  in  it 
on  the  train,  walks  in  it  through  the  street; 

4r 


Z$t  luusijfjp  of  Nature 

and  the  superior,  commanding,  thoughtful, 
masterly  self,  who  does  none  of  these  things, 
but  merely  looks  on  and  approves.  Now,  it 
may  often  be  necessary  for  the  inferior  self 
to  hurry,  to  drive  on  the  willing  body  at  top 
speed  in  accomplishment  of  some  good  ob- 
ject; but  it  can  never  be  needful  for  the  domi- 
nant self  to  be  in  haste.  It  is  the  business 
of  the  lower  self  to  serve  and  bear  about  the 
higher;  it  is  the  business  of  the  higher  self  to 
rule  and  direct  the  lower.  And  if  I  allow 
my  inner  imperial  self  to  descend  and  toil  in 
the  servant's  place,  to  become  hurried  and 
anxious  and  fearful,  I  am  degraded;  I  deteri- 
orate every  minute.  I  leave  the  throne  un- 
occupied, and  yet  the  work  of  the  scullery  is 
no  better  done. 

Many  a  man  makes  a  wreck  of  health  and 
happiness  through  worry.  He  cannot,  as  we 
say,  possess  his  soul  in  patience.  He  cannot 
see  the  needs  of  the  hour  alone,  he  is  looking 
at  the  needs  of  the  coming  year  at  the  same 
time.    No  wonder  he  is  abashed  and  disheart- 

46 


2^a«m  aim  2£lastt 

ened.  A  piece  of  work  is  to  be  done.  To  put 
his  hand  to  it  quietly  and  without  worry  or 
hurry,  would  mean  that  it  could  be  finished 
in  a  day.  If  he  would  only  hold  his  ruling 
self  still,  and  order  that  useful  drudge,  his 
secondary  self,  to  perform  the  labour,  a  day 
would  amply  suffice  to  see  it  finished.  But,  no, 
he  does  not  do  that.  He  is  infected  with  the 
modern  plague  of  haste.  His  soul  is  nervous; 
it  is  not  content  to  sit  by  and  see  the  work 
performed;  it  must  rush  down  and  tire  itself 
out  in  tasks  it  was  never  meant  to  be  occupied 
with.  So  our  friend  frets  and  fumes  over  his 
work  for  a  week  before  he  begins  it;  it  keeps 
him  awake  at  night;  it  disturbs  his  appetite; 
it  makes  him  nervous  and  fanciful  and  incom- 
petent; and  when  at  last  he  does  drag  him- 
self through  the  performance,  the  work  is 
ill  done. 

Yes,  it  is  necessary,  in  order  to  secure  good 
work,  that  we  should  throw  ourselves  into 
it  whole-heartedly,  as  the  phrase  goes.  There 
must  be  no  half-measures;    we  must  be  ab- 

47 


£f)t  Zuustjip  of  Mature 

sorbed  absolutely  in  the  task  before  us.  But 
this  does  not  mean  that  the  directing  soul,  the 
loftier  self,  must  be  engrossed.  It  means  only 
that  all  those  powers  and  faculties  are  to  be 
employed  which  rightly  can  be  employed  in 
labour.  It  is  not  the  province  of  the  soul  to 
labour.  Its  proper  office  is  to  exist,  to  be  and 
enjoy,  to  sorrow  if  it  must,  to  rejoice  when  it 
can,  to  direct,  order,  and  govern. 

It  is  absolutely  necessary  that  we  guard 
against  the  intrusion  of  haste  within  the  pre- 
cincts of  the  spirit.  If  we  have  no  habit  of 
easy  work,  no  faculty  for  accomplishing 
things  without  effort,  we  must  try  to  acquire  it. 
For  it  is  above  all  things  desirable  that  we 
should  live  without  fret  and  strain  and  haste 
in  the  inmost  chambers  of  being.  It  does  not 
make  the  least  difference  what  the  occupation 
may  be.  You  enter  a  studio,  perhaps,  where 
the  walls  are  dim  and  reposeful,  where  the 
atmosphere  is  quiet,  and  where  you  might 
suppose  no  haste  nor  disquiet  ever  entered. 
But  what  do  you  find?     The  occupant  is  a 

48 


71>astc  antr  Wla&tt 

modern  painter.  One  glance  condemns  him; 
he  is  doomed ;  the  blight  of  haste  is  upon  him ; 
every  movement  of  his  hand,  every  turn  of  his 
head,  reveals  the  fever  of  excitement  under 
which  he  is  working.  He  cannot  be  himself 
for  a  minute,  no,  not  for  a  second.  He  is 
bereft  of  control.  He  is  consumed  with  haste. 
The  fatal  malady  of  modern  life  against  which 
we  must  fight  has  taken  hold  on  him.  You 
perceive  at  once  that  he  is  not  living  at  the 
centre  of  his  being  at  all.  His  soul,  instead 
of  remaining  in  its  secret  chamber,  alone, 
contemplative,  kindly,  serene,  and  glad,  has 
rushed  into  his  haste-driven  fingers.  His  work 
is  killing  him,  because  he  is  not  doing  it  prop- 
erly, and  the  work  itself  is  being  ruined  for 
want  of  proper  balance  and  control. 

On  the  other  hand,  look  at  this  workman 
in  a  machine-shop.  The  belts  are  whirring 
and  the  cogs  roaring  all  around  him;  the 
dingy  house  of  iron  and  glass  is  a  rattlebox  of 
noise  and  dust  and  ceaseless  clang.  You  would 
say  that  repose  in  such  a  place  were  impossi- 

49 


£f)e  Ztiugijf  ji  of  Nature 

ble.  And  yet  he  goes  about  his  work  with  a 
quiet  pleasure,  with  a  poise  and  deliberation, 
that  show  he  has  learned  the  secret  of  work 
and  of  repose.  He  is  intent,  zealous,  and  effi- 
cient; you  would  even  say  he  is  absorbed  in 
his  daily  business.  But  you  perceive  that  at 
the  centre  of  his  being  there  is  calm.  He  has 
learned  to  possess  his  soul.  He  is  without 
haste. 


5o 


&t  tfte  Coming  of  Spring 


&t  ti)c  Coming  of  Spring 


As  the  natural  year  draws  round  to  a  finish 
and  the  perished  winter  merges  into  spring, 
the  old  impulses  for  recreation  are  revived. 
Not  a  foot  but  treads  the  pavement  a  trifle 
more  eagerly,  with  more  divine  discontent,  as 
the  hours  of  sunshine  lengthen  and  soften  at 
the  approach  of  April.  How  loving,  alluring, 
and  caressing  the  air  was  the  other  day,  —  full 
of  rumours  from  the  south,  news  of  the  vast 
migrations  already  beginning  and  soon  to  en- 
compass us  with  their  unnumbered  people. 
Already  the  first  summer  visitors  have  ap- 
peared in  the  hills  and  over  the  marshes,  by 
ones  and  twos,  the  vanguard  of  the  hosts  of  oc- 
cupation ;  and  even  in  the  bad-lands  of  the  city 
canyons  we  have  intimations  of  these  miracu- 

53 


Stye  iuusiju)  of  Katttre 

lous  changes.  There  come  to  us,  deep  in  the 
heart,  familiar  but  uncomprehended  prompt- 
ings to  vagabondage,  to  fresh  endeavour, 
to  renewal  of  life  and  wider  prospects;  hope 
comes  back  with  the  south  wind,  and  courage 
comes  in  on  the  tide.  Plodding  is  all  very  well 
through  streets  of  slush  and  under  skies  of 
slate;  but  when  the  roads  are  dry  underfoot 
and  day  is  blue  again  overhead,  the  methods 
of  mere  endurance  and  drudgery  will  no 
longer  serve.  The  tramp  instinct,  which  is 
no  respecter  of  respectability,  wakes  up  and 
has  its  due.  On  Sunday  thousands  of  bicycles 
appear,  like  flies  in  the  sudden  warmth;  on 
Monday  there  are  carnations  in  the  button- 
holes of  Wall  Street;  while  every  hansom  on 
the  Avenue  is  freighted  with  the  destruction 
of  another  Troy.  For  this  is  early  spring  and 
the  time  of  recreation  is  come. 

If  we  think  of  the  affairs  of  the  universe 
as  controlled  by  laws  of  rhythm,  there  seems 
to  be  a  rhythm  here,  too,  —  the  rhythm  of 
creation  and  recreation,  the  contraction  and 

54 


&t  tfje  (Tomtnfi  of  Spriufl 

expansion  of  the  heart  of  humanity.  In  obedi- 
ence to  this  law  we  flock  cityward  in  the  fall, 
congregating  and  socializing  ourselves  for 
mutual  dependence  of  work,  —  the  plodding, 
uninspired  necessary  work  of  the  world;  but 
when  the  confining  forces  of  winter  are  with- 
drawn, society  disintegrates  again,  pouring 
itself  out  into  the  wider  regions  of  country, 
out-door  life,  leisure,  recreation.  We  have  a 
yearning  to  be  desocialized,  that  the  individual 
may  expand.  Cooperation  and  dependence 
become  irksome.  The  simple  human  heart  has 
a  call  to  care  for  its  own  greatest  needs,  and 
must  have  fresh  air  and  a  bit  of  solitude, 
time  to  think  and  room  to  breathe,  a  break  in 
the  fence  and  an  open  road  over  the  hill. 
The  desire  of  freedom  is  like  a  seed;  once 
lodged  in  a  crack  of  the  walls  of  circumstance, 
it  may  disrupt  the  well-built  order  of  con- 
ventional progress,  but  it  will  have  light  and 
space.  Good  ventilation  is  our  only  safeguard 
against  disaster  in  this  direction.  You  cannot 
kill  the  seed,  you  can  only  see  to  it  that  the 

55 


walls  have  plenty  of  wide,  airy  crevices  where 
the  wind  and  sun  may  penetrate  freely. 

There  is  another  rhythmic  flux  and  reflux  in 
the  relation  of  art  to  life;  the  creations  of  the 
one  are  the  recreation  of  the  other.  It  is  the 
business  of  art  to  furnish  us  an  escape  from 
the  actual,  a  spacious  colony  in  the  provinces 
of  beauty,  and  free  transportation  thither.  A 
new  picture  or  a  new  volume  of  poems  or  a 
new  story  is  not  worth  much  if  it  does  not 
give  one  a  passage  to  some  unexplored  corner 
of  that  far  country.  You  think,  perhaps, 
this  is  a  chimerical  fancy,  —  the  foolishness  of 
a  visionary  conception  of  art,  calculated  to 
divorce  art  more  and  more  from  the  actual. 
No,  for  it  is  the  business,  as  it  is  the  wish,  of 
the  actual  to  remould  itself  constantly  nearer 
and  nearer  some  ideal,  some  model,  some 
normal  standard  ;  and  this  model  it  is  the  busi- 
ness of  art  to  create.  The  earth  has  been 
infected  with  epidemics  of  insanity  before 
now,  —  with  the  tulip  craze  and  the  South 
Sea  bubble,  for  instance.     It  is  the  madness 

56 


&t  ttje  ComfuQ  of  Spring 

of  our  time  and  country  to  fancy  that  benefits 
are  the  greater  as  they  are  the  more  tangible, 
and  that  happiness  is  inherent  in  material 
things.  But  joy  and  elation  and  betterment 
reside  in  appreciation,  not  in  possession.  The 
owner  of  a  picture  is  the  man  who  can  make 
it  his  own,  not  the  man  in  whose  house  it  has 
been  immured.  Our  sedulous  laws  regulate 
the  transference  of  ponderable  commodities 
and  the  appearance  of  things;  but  the  traffic 
in  realities,  between  mind  and  mind,  is  contra- 
band and  free.  It  is  in  this  trade  that  the 
artist  is  engaged;  if  his  merchandise  is  inap- 
preciable and  invaluable,  his  returns  must  be 
so,  too.  His  visible  compensation  must  be  pre- 
carious,—  a  matter  of  circumstance;  his  true 
compensation  will  always  be  just  and  equi- 
table. As  no  one  knows  how  much  his  work 
cost  him,  no  one  can  know  how  well  he  was 
repaid  for  it.  But  you  may  be  sure  that  there 
was  no  discrepancy  in  that  transaction. 

Our  recreation  should  be  not  merely  sport, 
but   a   true    recreation  of    forces.     The   best 

57 


art)*  2ttit&i)f j)  of  Nature 

recreation  is  that  reengendering  of  the  spirit 
which  takes  place  through  the  avenues  of  art. 
To  meet,  to  know,  to  assimilate  perfectly  some 
fresh  creation  of  art,  is  to  be  recreated  thor- 
oughly, —  to  be  put  in  tune  anew,  and  set  in 
harmony  once  more. 

The  best  of  wisdom  in  learning  is  to  learn 
the  various  cures  and  remedies  to  medicine  the 
mind.  Poor  volatile  sensitive  mind  of  man, 
so  easily  thrown  out  of  gear,  so  easily  read- 
justed! So  when  the  time  of  the  singing  of 
birds  is  come,  and  the  months  of  application 
are  drawing  to  a  close,  and  you  begin  to  look 
about  for  recreation,  you  must  not  take  it  at 
haphazard.  The  recreation  must  be  personal, 
suited  at  once  to  self  and  to  season.  The  art 
most  accessible  to  us  all  is  folded  between 
covers  of  cloth  or  paper,  and  may  be  carried 
with  us  to  the  mountains  or  the  shore.  If  it 
is  well  selected,  it  will  serve  to  second  the 
athletic  recreations  of  the  body,  and  put  us  in 
fine  accord  with  the  influences  of  nature  and 
thought.    If  it  is  ill  selected,  our  holiday  may 

58 


&t  tfje  doming  of  Spring 

result  in  dyspeptic  days  of  unprofitable  idle- 
ness. For  idleness  is  like  everything  else,  it 
may  be  either  good  or  bad.  True  idleness  con- 
sists in  doing  nothing,  with  the  grace  and 
mastery  of  an  accomplishment;  this  is  an  art. 
False  idleness  consists  in  doing  nothing,  but  in 
doing  it  with  the  ill-nature  and  sloth  of  dis- 
content; this  is  criminal.  A  beautiful  idle- 
ness requires  temper  and  genius;  and  though 
people  of  means  may  fancy  they  can  compass 
it,  you  will  nearly  always  find  a  discordant 
restlessness  somewhere  in  their  leisure.  It  is 
only  the  artist  in  life  who  can  afford  to  be  an 
idler,  and  you  may  take  it  as  sober  earnest  that 
he  is  no  debauchee  of  inactivity. 


59 


Cf)t  Wernal  Bfoes 


S%e  Vernal  Sto 


It  is  one  of  those  happy  phrases  in  which 
Emerson  abounds,  fresh  and  racy  without  be- 
ing slipshod,  homely  but  distinguished.  What 
suggestions  does  it  not  carry  of  suns  and  warm 
breezes,  of  mounting  sap  and  wild  bird  calls, 
and  the  purple  evening  hills! 

There  is  a  day  in  February  which  marks 
off  the  gray  time  of  winter  from  the  green 
time  of  spring  as  clearly  as  a  line  on  a  calendar. 
Even  the  brightest  December  sunshine  gives 
no  ray  of  hope;  it  is  relentless,  forbidding, 
unpromising;  the  sky  foretells  only  an  eternity 
of  changeless  cold ;  one  could  never  look  upon 
it  and  prophesy  the  miracle  of  summer.  But 
by  and  by  there  comes  a  February  morning, 
when  the  frost  may  not  be  less  keen,  nor  the 

63 


STfte  musQU)  of  Mature 

sunshine  more  bright,  yet  there  is  a  different 
expression  on  the  face  of  the  elements.  Hope 
has  been  born  somewhere  in  the  far  south,  and 
there  are  premonitions  of  change,  portents  of 
liberation  and  joy.  It  is  the  first  faint  rumour 
of  spring.  And  though  the  blizzard  may 
sweep  down  again  out  of  the  north  in  the  next 
hour,  we  know  his  victory  will  not  be  lasting; 
"  the  vernal  ides "  are  on  their  way;  the  old 
Aprilian  triumph  is  at  hand.  A  little  pa- 
tience more,  a  few  weeks  or  days,  and  we  shall 
behold  the  first  signals  of  their  advance;  the 
buds  will  be  on  the  trees;  a  sudden  wild  song, 
fleeting  but  unmistakable,  will  break  across 
the  noon  and  be  gone  again  almost  before  we 
can  recognize  it.  And  then  at  last  we  shall 
wake  up  in  some  golden  morning,  with  a 
blessed  song-sparrow  singing  his  litany  of  joy 
in  our  enchanted  ears,  and  know  the  vernal 
ides  at  last  are  here. 

It  is  only  in  the  north  that  we  fully  love  the 
spring.  After  these  iron  months  of  unremit- 
ting struggle  with  the  giant  cold,  the  spirit  is 

64 


glad  when  relief  comes  at  length;  and  the 
season  of  returning  vitality  has  a  festal  charm 
all  its  own.  The  day  when  the  river  breaks  up 
is  a  holiday  in  the  heart,  whether  we  work 
or  not.  All  winter  long  it  has  lain  there  before 
our  doors,  a  broad,  white  road  between  the 
hills,  swept  with  gusts  of  sparkling  drift  in 
the  hard,  bleak  sunlight,  gleaming  bluish  and 
mystical  while  the  enormous  moon  stood  over 
its  solitary  wastes,  —  dumb,  prisoning,  im- 
placable. But  at  last  deliverance  arrives,  and 
the  bumping,  crunching,  jamming  ice-floe  is 
starting  seaward  with  a  thousand  confused 
voices,  while  the  old  faithful  blue  appears 
once  more  glimmering  and  golden  and  glad. 
The  first  dip  of  the  canoe's  bow  into  that  fa- 
miliar flood,  the  first  stroke  of  the  paddle,  the 
first  long  sunny  day  afloat  among  the  willow 
stems  in  the  overflowed  meadow  lands,  and 
the  first  call  of  the  golden-wing,  lone  and 
high,  over  wood  and  lake!  The  gladness  of 
such  a  season  comes  only  to  those  who  have 
endured  the  gray  storms,  the  low,  cold  suns 

6j 


Efje  mn^ip  of  TSTatttre 

and  the  purple  vaulted  night,  where  every- 
thing is  sealed  with  the  slumber  of  the 
frost. 

Little  wonder  that  the  vernal  ides  should 
fill  so  large  a  place  in  the  northern  imagina- 
tion. Long  inheritance  of  April  happiness 
has  given  us  that  peculiar  malady  we  call 
spring  fever;  has  given  us,  too,  a  special  spir- 
itual sympathy  or  wonder  in  the  reviving  year. 
This  truly  religious  sense  has  made  itself 
widely  felt  in  the  racial  expression,  in  the  arts 
of  poetry  and  painting. 

"  Oh,  to  be  in  England,  now  that  April's  there, 

And  whoever  wakes   in   England   sees   some    morning, 

unaware, 
That  the  lowest  boughs  and  the  brushwood  sheaf 
Round  the  elm-tree  bole  are  in  tiny  leaf, 
While  the  chaffinch  sings  on  the  orchard  bough 
In  England  —  now  !  " 

These  "  Home  Thoughts  from  Abroad,"  of 
Browning,  or  Mr.  Kipling's  lyrical  cry  of  the 
exile  in  India,  with  their  refrain,  "  It  is  spring 

66 


&%t  Vtvml  Jftres 

in  England  now,"  embody  the  northern  senti- 
ment, a  worship  which  may  be  pagan,  but  is 
certainly  lovely  and  wholesome,  for  — 

"  Spring  still  makes  spring  in  the  mind, 
When  sixty  years  are  told." 

Of  the  mood  which  comes  with  the  vernal 
ides,  are  born  those  aspirations  and  outpour- 
ings which  have  come  to  be  a  byword  under 
the  name  of  spring  poetry.  Perhaps  the  fact 
that  the  celebration  is  overdone  to  so  ridicu- 
lous an  excess  is  really  no  discredit,  though 
one  finds  a  new  note  seldom  enough.  Yet  I 
wonder  whether  the  vernal  ides  are  truly 
a  time  favourable  to  artistic  creation.  If  there 
are  seasons  of  the  mind,  its  April  should  be  a 
month  of  starting  and  growth,  of  extended 
horizons,  renewed  vigour,  fresh  inspirations. 
But  the  month  of  fruitage  is  September  or 
October,  and  the  achievements  of  art  are  ri- 
pened to  perfection  in  the  Indian  summer  of 
the  soul.  It  is  not  under  the  immediate  stress 
of  a  great  emotion  that  a  great  work  is  pro- 

67 


Stye  Ztf nsijU)  of  Mature 

duced ;  most  often  it  is  the  result  of  the  long, 
silent  cogitation,  when  the  mind  sits  in  au- 
tumnal luxury  thinking  to  itself.  In  the 
vernal  ides  who  would  spend  an  hour  on 
remembrance?  When  those  days  return  we 
are  too  thankful  for  mere  life,  too  sated  with 
the  rapturous  zest  of  being,  to  dwell  with  fond- 
ling care  over  the  swarming  creations  of  fancy. 
And  yet,  there  is  our  father  Chaucer  with  that 
never  stale  opening  of  the  prologue  to  his 
wondrous  tales. 

Of  the  inspirational  value  of  these  vernal 
ides  there  can  be  no  doubt.  They  come  back 
to  us  year  by  year  with  messages  and  reminders 
from  the  unfailing  sources  of  life;  they  are 
heathen  Druidic  Easter  days,  symbols  of  im- 
mortal gladness  and  strength.  When  they 
dawn,  we  must  bring  out  the  flame-coloured 
robe  of  pleasure,  and  leave  our  old  black 
garment  of  distrust,  our  overshoes  of  doubt, 
and  our  umbrella  of  skepticism  in  the  closet. 
No  pessimist  must  stir  abroad  when  April 
comes.     But  we  must  all  stand  with  bright 

68 


Wtyt  Vtvnal  X&tB 

faces  and  clapping  hands,  when  the  long  pro- 
cession with  banners  of  green  moves  up  from 
the  south.  It  is  the  feast  of  the  vernal 
ides. 


69 


Cfte  ^eeti  of  ^uccesa 


&ije  &eefc  of  Sucee0S 


After  all  is  said  and  done,  where  does  suc- 
cess reside?  In  material  advantages,  in  soli- 
tary contentment,  in  lofty  resignation?  Is  it 
in  securing  an  aim  after  long  years  of  en- 
deavour, or  is  it  in  the  daily  realization  of  ac- 
complished toil?  Shall  we  measure  it  by  the 
patent  standard  of  the  visible  shows  and  cir- 
cumstances of  life,  acknowledged  by  every 
one,  or  by  the  inward  silent  sanction  of  the 
individual  conscience? 

Perhaps  before  one  answers  one  must  recall 
the  ultimate  aims  and  ambitions  of  this  so 
frail  mortality.  Ask  yourself,  ask  your 
friend,  ask  the  first  man  you  pass.  I  fancy 
they  will  tell  you  in  one  word,  happiness  is 
the  end  of  man's  endeavour.    Just  to  be  happy, 

73 


£tjt  mtugi)ij)  of  Mature 

to  taste  even  for  a  moment  the  zest  of  radiant 
joy,  is  to  partake  of  immortality.  And  to 
secure  for  himself  as  many  serene  hours  and 
ecstatic  moments  as  may  be,  this  is  the  real  aim 
of  every  man. 

Why  do  I  desire  estates,  houses,  display, 
friends,  a  family,  society,  pomp,  luxury, 
power,  ease,  or  amusement?  Solely  because 
in  these  things  there  reside  momentary  pleas- 
ures; because  in  them  there  are  opportunities 
of  reviving  hour  by  hour  the  fleeting  instants 
of  unadulterated  gladness;  because  in  appre- 
ciating or  experiencing  them,  the  unresting 
spirit  finds  the  very  breath  of  its  life. 

You  ask  me  whether  I  call  So-and-So  suc- 
cessful; I  must  ask  you  whether  he  has  been 
happy.  It  may  be  he  was  poor  and  looked 
down  upon;  but  even  so  he  was  by  no  means 
unsuccessful,  unless  he  was  dejected,  unless 
he  longed  for  fame  and  wealth.  It  may  be  he 
was  crowned  with  every  tangible  evidence  of 
success,  a  man  of  note  and  influence,  sur- 
rounded by  everything  he  had  striven  for;  still 

74 


&J)C  Ssttti  Of  SttCttfiSS 

I  call  him  unsuccessful  if  there  lurked  at  his 
heart  some  faint  reek  of  discontent.  No,  to 
be  successful  is  to  be  happy.  Happiness  is 
success.  If  there  can  but  permeate  the  spirit 
some  floating  sense  and  savour  of  joy,  as  we 
live,  then  is  our  success  assured.  If  every 
day  we  can  feel,  if  only  for  a  moment,  the 
elation  of  being  alive,  the  realization  of  being 
our  best  selves,  of  filling  out  our  destined  scope 
and  trend,  you  may  be  sure  we  are  succeeding. 

And  for  one  I  must  fancy  that  this  gladness 
of  life,  this  sure,  radiant,  happy  sense  of  suc- 
cess comes  only  to  the  loving  heart.  It  is 
very  trite  but  very  true  to  call  love  the  seed 
of  success. 

If  anything  can  fill  a  human  heart  with  that 
sunny  warmth  of  loving  kindness,  for  that 
individual  success  is  already  assured.  Look  at 
the  people  in  the  street,  the  faces  streaming 
past  you,  as  you  walk.  It  is  sad  to  note  how 
many  are  the  sorry,  dejected,  sick,  and  dis- 
pirited. But  even  as  you  look  on  these  trans- 
parent masks,   do  you   not  know   intuitively 

75 


£f)C  Itmsfjtjj  of  Mature 

that  the  reason  of  their  unhappy  plight  is  their 
lack  of  success,  and  that  the  reason  of  their 
lack  is  their  want  of  love?  It  is  not  a  question 
of  relative  wealth.  There  are  not  more  un- 
happy faces  in  one  class  than  another.  Think 
of  the  delicious  thrill  of  encouragement  one 
has  now  and  again  simply  in  encounter- 
ing a  glad,  happy  human  face  passing  in  the 
throng.  Happiness,  perhaps,  comes  by  the 
grace  of  Heaven ;  but  the  wearing  of  a  happy 
countenance,  the  preserving  of  a  happy  mien, 
is  a  duty,  not  a  blessing.  If  I  am  so  unloving 
and  embittered  that  there  is  no  suffusion  of 
love  in  my  heart  which  can  show  in  my  face, 
at  least  I  am  bound  by  every  sacred  obliga- 
tion to  my  fellows  to  maintain  a  smiling  coun- 
tenance. Yes,  even  if  it  be  insincere.  For 
two  reasons,  for  the  sake  of  others,  and  for 
the  sake  of  myself.  There  is  nothing  more 
potent  than  habit;  and  a  sullen,  hang-dog, 
injured,  resentful  expression  is  not  only  an 
unkindness  to  others  but  a  menace  to  ourselves. 
While    he    who    continually   wears    a    smile 

76 


&tje  S*rtr  of  Stuttss 

must  at  times  be  betrayed  into  a  smiling  glad- 
ness of  spirit. 

Let  us  remember  the  wisdom  of  the  students 
of  expression,  in  this  regard,  and  be  sure  that 
if  the  inward  habit  of  mind  can  control  and 
form  the  outward  habit  of  the  body,  this  same 
outward  habit  of  the  features  and  frame  im- 
presses itself  reflexly  on  the  indwelling  spirit. 
It  is  a  realization  of  this  truth  that  makes  the 
Japanese  insist  so  rigorously  on  the  courteous 
seeming  in  all  their  daily  deportment.  Cheer- 
fulness is  with  them  a  social  duty;  and  if  every 
man  is  not  successful  he  is  at  least  required  to 
assume  the  aspect  of  success,  the  guise  of  a 
happy,  contented  spirit.  How  much  might 
we  not  add  to  the  total  sum  of  our  happi- 
ness as  a  people,  if  we,  too,  felt  such  an  obliga- 
tion. If  you  can  find  any  justification  for 
putting  an  unhappy  murderer  to  death,  there 
surely  ought  to  be  some  punishment  for  that 
unsocial  creature  who  constantly  shows  a 
gloomy  face  to  the  world.  What  right  have 
you  to  sulk  or  be  sad  of  visage?  Your  sorrow 

77 


STJje  ZMustjfv  of  Xatttre 

is,  after  all,  no  more  than  the  common  inheri- 
tance of  all  our  kind,  and  there  is  before  us 
still  the  old  duty  of  brave,  cheerful  heroism. 
In  the  name  of  all  the  saints,  therefore,  let  us 
pluck  up  a  heart  from  somewhere  and  turn  a 
pleasant  look  upon  the  world!  We  shall  thus 
all  become  conspirators  for  happiness,  each 
man  in  collusion  with  his  neighbour  to  in- 
crease the  sum  of  joy  in  the  earth,  to  lighten 
the  burden  of  the  days  and  to  put  far  off  the 
night-time  of  inevitable  natural  sorrow. 

Then,  too,  think  how  the  seed  of  success  in 
all  our  artistic  achievements  is  constantly  re- 
vealing itself  as  the  spirit  of  loving  cheerful- 
ness. There  is  nothing  but  the  warmth  of 
devotion  which  can  irradiate  and  illumine  the 
crafts  of  our  hands.  No  skill,  no  technique, 
no  device,  no  love  of  traditions,  is  competent 
for  an  instant  to  take  the  place  of  the  artist's 
love  and  care.  You  will  see  it  in  every  line 
the  painter  draws,  in  every  note  the  musician 
sounds,  or  you  will  miss  it  sorely.  And  wher- 
ever you  are  brought  into  touch  with  any  piece 

78 


artje  Sect*  of  Success 

of  art  that  has  the  power  to  move  you,  you 
may  be  certain  it  has  influence  over  the  frail 
human  heart  because  of  the  love  in  the  heart 
of  its  creator.  This  is  true,  not  only  of  the 
fine  arts,  but  of  all  those  less  ambitious  but  no 
less  honest  arts  we  call  industrial,  to  which  so 
much  untold  toil  has  gone  in  the  long  history 
of  man. 


79 


ifact  ant»  jfancp 


# act  atrtr  fancy 


BETWEEN  fancy  and  fact  lies  the  dilemma 
we  call  life.  On  the  one  hand,  things  as  they 
are;  on  the  other,  things  as  we  would  have 
them  be.  On  the  one  side,  the  solid,  durable, 
implacable  circumstance;  on  the  other,  the 
plastic  will,  the  deviable  desire,  the  incerti- 
tude of  mind.  And  yet  the  fact  is  not  estab- 
lished beyond  the  influence  of  fancy.  We  are 
no  more  victims  of  circumstance  than  circum- 
stance is  the  shadow  of  ourselves.  We  are 
moulded,  we  say,  by  the  conditions  and  sur- 
roundings in  which  we  live;  but  we  too  often 
forget  that  the  environment  is  largely  what 
we  make  it.  We  are  like  children  living  in 
fear  of  the  fabulous  giant,  if  we  do  not  remem- 
ber that  fact  is  solidified  fancy.    What  is  the 

83 


2TJ)t  ftiuaftU)  of  ^Nature 

form  and  substance  of  our  daily  life  but  the 
realization  of  countless  years  of  aspiration  and 
resolve? 

There  is  nothing  accomplished  that  is  not 
just  the  impalpable  breath  of  dream,  a  sug- 
gestion, a  hint  of  spirit;  on  this  the  active 
self  lays  hold,  and  forges  it  into  the  more  per- 
manent shape.  We  make  our  habits,  our  cus- 
toms, our  possessions,  as  spiders  spin  their  airy 
nets.  The  massive  fabrication  of  civilized 
communities  is  reared  from  stuff  more  vola- 
tile than  the  clouds,  only  half  of  it  is  solid. 
And  yet  it  is  in  awe  of  these  floating  appari- 
tions that  we  pass  so  much  time. 

This  is  unwholesome.  Fear  is  a  malarial 
germ  in  the  soul.  If  only  the  world  could  cast 
out  fear  and  establish  hope  in  its  place,  the 
morning  of  the  millennium  would  be  already 
far  advanced.  But  if  we  would  not  fear,  then 
we  must  love.  If  we  would  not  shrink  from 
the  facts  of  life,  we  must  love  them.  We  are 
creatures  so  strangely  compounded  of  dust  and 
dream,   that  we  can   never  wholly  give  our 

84 


iFact  au*r  jfmt£ 

allegiance  to  either  one.  We  are  neither  ani- 
mal nor  angel,  at  present;  and  wherever  our 
trend  of  aspiration  may  lead  us  in  future, 
certainly  this  life  is  in  some  sense  a  compro- 
mise. Desirable  as  the  angelic  ideal  appears, 
beautiful  as  it  is  for  an  ultimate  goal,  there 
is  the  fact  of  the  physical  to  be  taken  count 
of,  to  be  respected,  to  be  reverenced,  to  be 
loved,  equally  with  the  spiritual.  They  miss 
the  very  core  and  gist  of  human  life,  it  seems 
to  me,  who  forget  this  miracle,  the  union  of 
mind  and  matter.  And  certainly  we  shall 
accomplish  little  by  an  undivided  devotion  to 
the  one  side  of  life  at  the  expense  of  the  other. 
It  sometimes  appears  that  every  human  ill  can 
be  traced  to  the  divergence  between  fancy  and 
fact,  between  what  we  have  done  and  what 
we  would  do.  And  this  again  is  traceable  to 
the  faulty  idea  in  the  first  instance. 

It  is  evident,  then,  how  loyal  we  need  be 
to  the  promptings  of  fancy,  to  the  inspiration 
to  the  glimmering  of  genius.  For  if  we  mis- 
interpret or  disregard  this  word  of  the  spirit, 

»5 


&%t  liiustjlp  of  Mature 

we  are  but  setting  out  toward  disaster.  Our 
wrong  initiative  gradually  takes  more  and 
more  solid  form  in  fact;  the  fact  closes  in 
moment  by  moment,  and  we  are  taken  in  the 
toils  of  our  own  weaving,  which  we  too  often 
call  inevitable  fate.  But  if  a  loyalty  to  the 
intimations  of  spirit  is  so  large  a  part  of  wis- 
dom, a  loyalty  to  fact  is  needed,  too,  —  a  loy- 
alty to  those  past  ideas  we  have  made  perma- 
nent. It  is  good  at  times  to  let  fancy  be,  to 
disregard  the  restless  urgings  of  the  inner 
life  and  dwell  with  the  comfortable  lower 
kingdoms,  with  the  trees  and  the  cattle. 

That  is  one  reason  why  we  must  take  care 
to  have  our  ideals  right,  so  that  when  they 
have  become  crystallized  into  circumstance 
and  conditions  we  shall  be  able  to  live  with 
them.  It  is  an  unhappy  soul  that  cannot  live 
with  its  facts.  If  my  outward  material  sur- 
roundings and  my  relations  with  my  fellow 
beings  are  such  that  I  cannot  live  with  them 
quietly,  normally,  and  frankly,  as  the  weeks  go 
by,  but  must  depend  on  the  intellectual  and 

86 


spiritual  life  wholly,  then  I  am  on  the  road 
to  sickness  and  sorrow.  For  fact  and  fancy 
cannot  be  long  divorced;  the  one  cannot  live 
without  the  other;  they  are  the  body  and  soul 
of  the  universe.  To  the  materialist  must  be 
said:  "Cleave  close  to  your  fancy.  Never 
forsake  for  a  moment  that  generous  and  faith- 
ful guide.  Be  not  overengrossed  with  the 
visible  and  solid  beauty  of  being."  To  the 
overstrenuous  idealist  must  be  said:  "Hold 
hard  to  fact.  Live  near  the  comforting,  un- 
restless  blessings  of  the  actual.  Never  stray 
too  far  from  the  physical  phase  of  existence, 
lest  you  wander  and  be  lost  for  ever." 

Men  and  women  who  take  upon  themselves 
the  tasks  of  the  intellectual  life,  who  try  ever 
so  humbly  to  help  forward  the  work  of  under- 
standing the  world,  who  wish  to  illumine  and 
cheer  the  dark  recesses  of  being,  are  peculiarly 
in  danger  of  ignoring  the  fact.  Eager  and 
sedulous  in  the  pursuit  of  this  dream  or  that, 
as  artists  or  preachers  or  teachers  or  reform- 
ers, they  become  wholly  absorbed  in  the  emo- 

87 


Efjr  itfnsijtj)  of  Nature 

tional  and  mental  life,  neglecting  the  material. 
They  are  forerunners  of  better  facts  which 
they  wish  to  see  established  and  for  which  they 
too  easily  die.  It  is  better  to  live  for  a  purpose 
than  to  die  for  it,  —  unless  to  die  is  necessary. 
But  our  friends  the  enthusiasts  who  secure  for 
us  so  much  good,  who  are  in  the  last  analysis 
the  authors  of  all  the  good  deeds  of  man, 
should  be  content  to  hasten  slowly,  and,  while 
they  strive  for  perfection,  to  hold  the  sadly 
imperfect  we  have  already  gained.  It  will 
avail  you  nothing  to  stand  face  to  face  with 
the  vision,  if  you  cannot  in  some  way  make 
actual  and  apparent  to  men  the  beauty  you 
have  beheld.  Let  aspiration  be  as  ethereal  as 
you  will,  the  spirit  of  beauty  must  be  made 
manifest  to  be  fully  enjoyed. 

Are  you  sick  or  sorry  or  dejected,  or  un- 
fortunate, or  overwrought?  There  may  be 
one  of  two  reasons  for  it;  either  you  are  living 
too  far  away  from  your  ideal  or  too  far  away 
from  your  facts.  If  you  are  world-sick,  retreat 
into  the  chamber  of  your  own  heart,  be  quiet 

88 


iFact  autr  iFatug 

and  obedient  to  your  genius,  and  summon  to 
your  aid  the  great  and  kindly  master's  thought. 
A  little  solitude,  a  little  contemplation,  a  little 
love,  is  the  cure  for  your  malady.  But  if  you 
are  soul-sick  from  too  much  stress  of  the  eager 
indomitable  spirit,  then  put  all  thought  aside; 
vegetate,  animalize,  be  ordinary,  and  thank 
God  there  are  easy,  unambitious  things  to  do. 
Curl  up  close  to  some  fact,  if  it  is  only  a 
dog,  or  a  wood  fire,  or  the  south  side  of  a 
barn,  and  forget  your  immortal  soul.  Your 
mortal  body  is  just  exactly  as  important,  and 
deserves  just  as  much  care  and  consideration. 
Be  wise,  be  indolent,  try  to  live  in  your  body 
and  not  merely  inhabit  it,  and  do  not  fuss  over 
the  Great  Tangle.  "  Who  leans  upon  Allah, 
Allah  belongs  to  him." 


89 


Caster  Cte 


(Basin  <&U 


PERHAPS  one  must  say  that  Christmas  Day 
is  the  happiest  festival  of  the  Christian  year, 
but  certainly  none  has  more  fine  subtle  glad- 
ness than  Easter.  On  Christmas  morning  we 
celebrate  the  great  fact  of  being  human;  we 
commemorate  the  coming  of  One  who  was 
intensely  a  man,  known,  seen,  touched,  and  be- 
loved of  our  own  very  kind,  a  perfect  comrade 
and  son,  the  embodiment  of  all  we  know  to  be 
best  in  mortal  beings.  At  Easter  we  celebrate 
the  immortal  fancy  of  an  imperishable  life. 
It  is  the  season  of  rapture,  of  lyric  belief  in 
more  than  human  possibility,  the  day  on  which 
the  timorous  soul  is  summoned  to  put  trust 
in  the  very  frailest  probability,  yet  with  the 
stoutest,  most  stubborn   faith.     Laying  aside 

93 


2Tfje  2dusS)i4)  of  Nature 

doubt  and  the  prosy  mind,  the  soul  now  and 
again  asserts  her  right  to  an  hour  of  pure  ideal- 
ism where  the  solid  and  safe  of  actuality  can 
have  no  part.  She  insists  that  conviction  is 
enough,  that  proof  is  not  necessary,  that  her 
beloved  dream  must  come  true  because  she  has 
dreamed  it  so  often  and  so  hard.  She  will 
hear  no  cold  discouragement  from  her  scien- 
tific sister  mind;  she  persists  in  being  fondly 
wilful  in  her  own  sweet  way.  What  do  the 
plain  deductions  of  all  the  doctors,  of  all  the 
schools  count  with  her?  Is  not  her  own  in- 
tuition more  reliable?  Shall  she  forsake  the 
warm,  comfortable  doctrine  of  a  beautiful 
immortality  for  the  barren  desolation  of  the 
fleeting  fact?  It  is  moods  of  the  spirit  such  as 
this,  that  one  commemorates  in  the  Easter 
celebrations. 

Apart  from  the  accepted  religious  signifi- 
cance of  the  day,  there  is  still  a  whole  cult  of 
lovely  and  encouraging  natural  religion  cling- 
ing about  the  Easter  holiday  which  we  ought 
to  be  very  loath  to  discard.     Rather,  indeed, 

94 


let  us  foster  all  its  gentle  associations  and  cus- 
toms. For  if  we  are  compelled  to  change  our 
way  of  thinking  on  religious  themes,  we  are 
not  compelled  to  change  our  way  of  feeling 
about  them.  And  the  essence  of  religion  is  the 
emotion,  not  the  thought,  —  the  sure  and  cer- 
tain conviction,  not  the  logical  conclusion. 
The  foundations  of  life  are  still  far  beyond 
the  reach  of  investigation;  but  among  the 
realities  of  life  as  we  perceive  it  is  the  sense 
of  trust  in  continual  goodness  and  abiding 
love.  Why  should  you  and  I  vex  ourselves 
about  the  problem  of  immortality  for  the  soul? 
You,  with  all  your  old-time  religious  certain- 
ties, are  not  more  joyously  convinced  of  it  than 
I,  though  I  can  offer  you  not  a  single  proof. 
On  the  eve  of  such  a  festival  in  the  midst  of 
spring,  what  memories  return  with  the  April 
winds!  The  breath  of  approaching  life  sifts 
through  the  trees  and  grasses,  the  sound  of 
running  water  stirs  in  the  wild  places,  the  birds 
make  songs  as  they  fly,  there  is  everywhere  the 
renewal    of    the    ancient    rapture    of    earth; 

95 


arfte  lunatjtji  of  Katitre 

yet  in  the  twilight  one  remembers  all  those 
glad  experiences  which  are  to  be  repeated  no 
more,  and  the  faces  of  unreturning  compan- 
ions. 

So  that  if  Easter  is  the  gladdest  of  days,  the 
eve  of  Easter  is  the  saddest.  It  is  now  that  I 
remember  my  vanished  friend.  In  vain  you 
speak  to  me  of  comfort  or  solace;  in  vain  you 
offer  me  the  consolations  of  some  supreme 
faith.  It  is  not  lofty  nobility  of  resignation 
that  will  aid  me;  I  care  not  for  all  the  sacra- 
ments and  sanctions  of  your  oldest  religion; 
neither  dogma  nor  theory  can  avail  to  help  me 
here;  for  after  all  I  ask  so  little.  I  only  want 
to  see  my  friend  again,  to  run  my  arm  about 
his  shoulder,  to  see  his  slow,  comfortable  smile, 
to  hear  that  gracious,  melodious  voice.  It  is 
just  these  common,  human,  earthly,  unecstatic 
things  I  crave.  And  yet  they  are  denied.  Is 
it  not  hard?  Time,  you  say,  will  assuage  this 
desolation?  No,  for  as  time  goes  on  I  shall 
only  need  him  the  more.  I  shall  be  more  and 
more  impoverished  by  his  absence,  for  hardly 

96 


a  day  goes  by  that  I  would  not  have  profited 
by  his  friendship.  In  this  crisis,  in  that  di- 
lemma, I  should  be  so  enriched  by  his  encour- 
agement, his  fortitude,  his  calm,  his  sympathy, 
his  insight.  And  wanting  all  this,  I  am  poorer 
every  minute  that  he  is  away. 

Yet  you  tell  me  it  is  the  fairest  of  April  days, 
in  the  best  of  worlds.  Yes,  I  know;  I  know 
all  that;  and  I  yield  to  no  one  in  this  foolish 
modern  devotion  to  nature;  but  I  tell  you 
the  universal  human  experience  is  right;  'tis 
friends  and  not  places  that  make  the  world. 
You  can  not  fool  my  heavy  heart  with  the 
windy  consolations  of  the  pines,  nor  the  sol- 
emn anthem  of  the  sea.  I  want  something 
more  common,  less  stupendous,  more  human. 
Ah,  but  give  me  one  more  day  with  the  man 
who  was  my  friend! 

No,  it  is  not  the  law.  The  gods  themselves 
cannot  control  the  Fates.  I  shall  not  find  his 
like  again.  But  every  April  as  the  earth 
revives,  and  the  returning  forces  of  the  grain 
and  the  sun  and  the  vital  air  bring  renewal  of 

97 


W$t  Wtinut}ip  of  ttfatttrt 

joys  to  the  creatures  of  this  globe,  I  shall  feel 
the  renewed  want  of  him,  and  I  shall  listen  for 
him  in  vain  in  our  accustomed  haunts.  There 
is  no  mitigation  to  that  sorrow.  But  in  the 
memory  of  his  great,  human,  loving  kindness 
there  is  the  seed  of  an  imperishable  joy,  the 
sufficient  foundation  for  at  least  one  man's 
faith.  His  influence  remains;  indeed,  it  grows 
and  ripens  about  me;  and  as  it  has  become 
invisible,  it  has  also  become  more  strong. 
Through  the  subtle  avenues  of  affection  I  par- 
take somewhat  of  his  generous  endowments. 
You  .shall  find  that  I  and  all  his  friends  are 
tempered  by  the  quality  of  his  personality.  If 
he  is  no  longer  here  as  an  apparent  force  in 
the  world  of  affairs,  those  whom  he  loved  are 
made  the  unconscious  vessels  of  his  imperish- 
able power,  the  instruments  of  that  potent 
spirit.  Even  while  we  grieve  for  him,  his 
influence  is  transforming  us  to  the  likeness 
of  something  better  than  our  former  daily 
selves;    and  we  begin  to  share  in  the  imper- 


98 


I=astrv  22uc 

sonal   greatness,    however   imperfectly,   with 
which  he  is  invested. 

Is  not  this  true  for  you  as  well  as  for  me? 
Have  you  not  some  such  friend  to  recall  at 
the  great  spring  festival?  And  glad  as  you 
have  been  for  the  actual  fact  of  sober  existence, 
are  you  not  equally  glad  for  the  unsubstantial 
fancy  of  immortality?  Do  you  not  assent  to 
the  fine  and  ancient  faith  which  is  embodied 
in  the  celebration  of  Easter? 


99 


%%t  Cost  of  3Seautp 


Efte  Cost  of  ifamtttj 


BEAUTY,  you  would  say  at  first  guess,  is  like 
genius;  it  is  above  cost  and  without  price.  It 
is,  in  the  outward  and  manifest  world  of  ap- 
pearance, what  genius  is  in  the  inward  and 
spiritual  world  of  imagination.  Each  in  its 
own  realm  is  the  miraculous  phenomenon  of 
perfection,  exhibited  in  the  midst  of  a  multi- 
tude of  imperfections,  arousing  our  wonder 
and  enthusiasm  to  heights  beyond  the  usual; 
so  that  around  beauty  or  genius  we  are  always 
ready  to  form  the  rudiments  of  a  cult,  to  invest 
it  with  something  of  reverence,  to  begin  to 
make  it  an  object  of  worship.  Indeed  our 
attitude  toward  it  has  the  elements  of  a  relig- 
ious feeling,  and  implies  a  tacit  belief  in  its 
divine  origin,  as  we  express  it. 

103 


Efje  fttngljii)  of  Nature 

Into  our  limited  view,  surrounded  every- 
where by  restrictions  and  laws,  beauty  and 
genius  come  as  supra-legal  apparitions,  com- 
pelling allegiance,  stimulating  joy,  exciting 
reverence.  They  are,  it  seems  to  us,  messen- 
gers and  envoys  extraordinary,  accredited  with 
intimations  from  the  unknown,  to  which  we 
gladly  give  ear.  They  embody  and  fore- 
shadow those  traits  of  winning  loveliness 
toward  which  we  aspire;  they  already  are 
what  we  would  be,  —  our  aspirational  and  en- 
nobled selves.  One  glimpse  of  beauty,  one 
hint  of  genius,  is  sufficient  illumination  for  a 
single  day,  —  yes,  perhaps  for  a  lifetime,  as 
we  simple  mortals  are  constituted.  How  old  a 
story  that  is,  wherein  some  loved  form  of 
beauty,  early  known  and  lost,  has  served  as  the 
enduring  inspiration  for  a  lifelong  human 
experience!  And  how  often  we  have  heard  of 
the  trend  of  a  character  changed  utterly  by  a 
single  thought,  a  single  gleam  of  genius! 

Small  wonder,  then,  if  we  have  come  near 
to  making  genius  a  demigod   and   beauty  a 

104 


artjc  (fost  of  iirautp 

divinity.  It  is  on  the  basis  of  this  superhuman 
conception  that  our  regard  for  them  has  been 
fostered. 

In  a  more  modern,  scientific  aspect,  what 
are  we  to  say  to  the  appearance  of  beauty 
manifest  to  the  senses,  of  genius  revealed  in 
thought?  Merely  that  they  are  the  natural 
outcome  of  natural  law,  in  no  way  more  mi- 
raculous than  the  imperfect  and  tentative  com- 
monplace world  about  us.  But  how,  in  that 
case,  is  my  enthusiasm  to  be  retained,  my  devo- 
tion and  respect  to  be  held?  It  is  a  trite 
enough  question.  There  is  no  fear  that  revela- 
tions of  new  knowledge  can  make  the  further 
unknown  seem  paltry  or  familiar.  Once  let 
us  accept  reverence  for  law  in  place  of  a  rever- 
ence for  the  supernatural,  as  it  was  called,  — 
once  let  us  acquire  the  habit  of  free  belief  in 
place  of  the  habit  of  credulous  timidity,  and 
the  borders  of  wisdom  will  seem  infinite;  the 
horizon  of  wonder  will  enlarge  at  each  step  of 
knowledge ;  and  what  we  see  will  appear  even 
more  wonderful  than  we  could  faintly  imag- 

105 


2Ttje  ILihistjip  of  Nature 

ine.  We  shall  come  to  think  of  beauty  as  the 
complete  realization  of  some  typical  thought 
under  the  restraint  of  law;  and  of  genius 
as  the  partial  manifestation  of  thought  itself 
under  a  like  restriction. 

Beauty,  then,  and  genius  will  seem  no  longer 
priceless;  their  value  will  be  very  definite.  It 
will  appear  that  they  are  produced  under  the 
most  exact  and  exacting  operations  of  the  great 
economy  of  nature.  We  shall  see  that  they 
have  been  priced  at  an  enormous  cost,  just 
as  we  knew  they  could  be  sold  for  a  song,  — 
beauty  the  most  perishable  and  fleeting  of 
things,  genius  the  most  volatile  and  imponder- 
able; this  we  knew;  but  we  supposed  they 
came  as  easily  as  they  went.  Ah,  no !  far  from 
that. 

You  find  some  object  of  art,  some  beautiful 
thing  the  hands  of  man  have  fashioned,  and 
ask  what  it  cost.  Here  is  a  wooden  tobacco- 
box  made  by  a  Japanese  artist  generations  ago. 
You  mark  the  loving  care  expended  on  it;  you 
see  it  never  could  have  been  created  by  rule; 

1 06 


<ITljr  <£ost  of  Vtauxij 

you  notice  how  the  humble  love  of  the  crafts- 
man utilized  every  grain  and  knot  of  the  wood, 
how  he  accommodated  his  talent  to  the  un- 
yielding exigencies  of  the  material,  yet  in  the 
end  compelled  it  to  serve  his  expressional 
need;  it  is  nothing  short  of  a  masterpiece  of 
genius.  And  what  do  you  think  it  cost?  Love, 
devotion,  restraint,  self-denial,  endurance, 
fidelity,  patience,  faith,  humility,  diligence, 
serenity,  scrupulous  living,  and  an  untarnished 
mind.  Do  you  recall  the  years  of  ungrudging 
privation,  of  unquestioning  toil,  that  made  that 
inspiration  of  beauty  possible?  Or  here  is  a 
modern  binding,  not  remarkable  perhaps,  yet 
bearing  evident  traces  of  loving  craftsman- 
ship. Do  you  know  how  long  the  binder  must 
sit  at  his  bench  before  he  can  learn  to  master 
the  cunning  gold  for  tooling  and  edges?  A 
friend  of  mine  asked  an  old  gilder  the  other 
day  how  long  it  would  take  to  learn  his  art. 
"  Well,"  he  answered,  "  some  can  learn  it  in 
five  years,  and  some  never  learn  it."  More 
patience,  more  devotion,  more  love  and  faith. 

107 


£fje  Itfnsfjfj)  of  Katute 

Yes,  all  art,  the  product  of  genius,  comes  of 
toil.  And  the  previous  question  behind  that, 
—  the  explanation  of  natural  beauty  and 
genius  itself.  The  first  spring  flower,  or  the 
first  bluebird  in  the  orchard;  are  they  the 
creations  of  a  moment,  the  inspiration  of  na- 
ture on  the  instant?  Think  of  the  endless 
unrecorded  history  implied  in  that  word  evo- 
lution,—  the  ages  of  endurance,  of  failure, 
of  submission,  of  tentative  and  countless  varia- 
tion, of  changing  type  and  perishing  order,  and 
this  one  frail  individual  emerging  at  last,  to 
hang  in  the  sun  for  so  brief  a  heart-beat !  Your 
Easter  lilies  cost  more  than  a  voyage  from  Ber- 
muda. To  bring  them  to  perfection  the  earth 
must  swing  like  a  pendulum  in  space,  and  the 
sun  and  moon  operate  the  machinery  of  the 
tides  for  more  aeons  than  we  know. 


108 


&i)£tf)m 


Itytjtfjm 


Now  that  spring  is  returning,  there  comes 
again  the  old  wonder  at  its  loveliness,  the  old 
radiant  sense  of  joy,  the  old  touch  of  sadness, 
—  the  sorrow  of  the  world.  If  we  awake  in 
the  serene  sunlight  of  some  still  April  dawn, 
and  find  our  life  on  the  flowery  earth  very 
good,  we  also  feel  the  question  which  underlies 
the  murmurous  twilight,  —  the  disturbing 
question  of  the  universe  to  which  there  is  no 
reply. 

In  the  morning,  as  you  stroll  from  the  house, 
the  buds  are  breaking,  the  grass  is  springing 
green  and  new;  there  is  no  need  for  intro- 
spection; it  is  enough  to  be  alive;  self-con- 
sciousness is  folly.  Only  the  sick  are  self- 
conscious;    and  the  first  step  on  the  road  to 

in 


Zfyt  luusDij)  of  Mature 

health  is  forgetfulness  of  self.  You  realize 
this  as  the  beauty  of  April  comes  over  you 
once  more,  and  all  your  senses  become  ab: 
sorbed  in  nature  and  forget  to  brood  idly  on 
themselves. 

But  in  April  there  is  more  than  the  mere 
robust  delight  of  the  morning;  there  is  the 
profound  sorrow  of  the  spring,  the  ancient 
and  unutterable  loneliness  and  sadness  of  hu- 
man life,  which  has  been  going  on  for  so  many 
untold  ages,  renewing  itself  in  confidence  each 
spring  and  yet  always  doomed  to  imperma- 
nence  and  transiency.  Even  before  we  can 
have  our  heart's  fill  of  the  dandelions,  they 
are  gone;  even  before  we  are  accustomed  to 
the  vanishing  music  of  the  birds,  it  has  ceased 
for  another  year ;  and  before  we  are  attuned  to 
beauty,  that  beauty  is  a  thing  of  remembrance. 
Then,  in  the  spring,  who  does  not  think  of 
things  that  are  never  to  return,  —  the  hand- 
clasps of  lovers,  the  conversations  of  our 
friends?  Where  is  the  princely  comrade  with 
whom  we  lunched   at  the  country  club   last 

I  12 


April?  Where  is  the  loyal  little  companion 
who  went  Mayflowering  with  us  last  year? 
Last  year?  It  is  twenty  years  ago.  It  matters 
not,  one  year  or  twenty;  the  oblivion  of  the 
April  rain  has  borne  them  all  away,  with  their 
griefs  and  delirious  joys,  to  the  country  over 
the  hill  where  all  the  dead  centuries  have  gone 
before  them. 

When  the  hosts  of  the  rain  come  back  they 
do  not  bring  the  friends  they  led  captive  in 
former  years.  They  come  for  some  of  us,  and 
we,  like  the  others,  shall  not  return.  Children 
of  the  dust,  travelling  with  the  wind,  "  Ah," 
we  say,  "  if  only  the  April  days  would  tarry 
always!  "  or  "  If  only  June  would  stay!  "  It 
seems  such  a  mal-adjustment  of  time,  when 
there  are  twelve  long  months  in  the  year,  only 
to  have  one  June!  All  the  gray  winter 
through,  and  even  all  through  the  spring,  we 
are  waiting  for  the  June  days,  the  perfection 
of  the  year,  and  when  they  come  there  is  not 
time  enough  to  apprehend  them.  June  goes 
by  every  year  like  an  express  train,  while  we 

"3 


Et)t  Irtusfjfj)  of  Xatttre 

stand  dazed  at  some  little  siding.  In  splendour 
and  power  it  sweeps  by;  a  gasp  of  the  breath 
as  we  attempt  to  realize  its  flight,  and  then 
June  is  gone,  and  there  is  only  another  dreary 
year  ahead.  It  is  only  in  June  that  life  reaches 
its  best,  and  yet  he  is  a  very  fortunate  man  who 
gets  four  or  five  years  of  June  in  his  lifetime. 
There  are  not  six  years  of  June  in  the  appor- 
tioned three  score  and  ten.  And  that  seems 
a  very  modest  amount  of  the  perfection  of 
summer  for  any  mortal  to  possess,  does  it  not? 
I  know  I  shall  never  be  reconciled  to  this;  but 
in  the  Elysian  fields  I  am  sure  it  is  arranged 
differently. 

Well,  the  meaning  of  it  all?  What  excuse 
can  Providence  have  to  offer  for  so  niggardly 
a  distribution  of  happiness  through  the  year? 
Why  so  much  ice  of  winter  and  so  little  wine 
of  spring?  Why  not  all  June  and  roses?  That 
is  a  babbler's  question,  and  the  babbler's 
answer  is  "  We  do  not  know." 

As  the  earth  vibrates  in  her  course  from 
autumnal  to  vernal  equinox  our  heart  vibrates 

114 


between  misgiving  and  elation.  The  long 
swing  of  the  planets  through  their  orbits  is  no 
more  than  a  single  beat  of  their  endless  vibra- 
tion. The  pendulum  of  the  sun  has  a  longer 
arm  than  the  pendulum  of  the  kitchen  clock, 
yet  the  law  of  rhythm  holds  in  both.  The 
moon  glowing  and  darkening  in  the  purple 
night  and  the  firefly  gleaming  and  then  extin- 
guished in  the  meadow  have  different  periods 
of  rhythm,  that  is  all.  Not  only  music  is 
rhythm,  but  all  sound  is  rhythm.  Colour,  too, 
is  rhythm,  —  the  light  rays  of  varying  length 
in  their  vibrations.  We  are  only  made  up  of 
a  mass  of  vibrations,  all  our  senses  being  but 
so  many  variations  of  the  power  of  perceiving 
and  measuring  rhythm. 

Rhythm  is  primarily  motion  from  one  point 
to  another.  This  is  the  beginning  of  life,  the 
first  evidence  of  anything  more  potent  than 
inert  matter.  You  see  how  faithfully  the 
rudimentary  idea  of  rhythm  is  maintained  in 
nature.  In  her  most  subtle  and  complex  per- 
formances she  never  resigns  that  first  mode  of 

"5 


£f)e  ZUusfjiJ)  of  ^atttrt 

essential  life,  but  does  all  things  according  to 
ordered  rhythm  and  harmony.  So  that  there 
could  not  be  any  June  at  one  side  of  the  Zodiac 
without  December  at  the  other.  The  year  in 
its  ebb  and  flow  is  the  pulse-beat  of  the  uni- 
verse. If  I  am  depressed  to-day  I  know  I 
shall  be  elated  to-morrow.  And,  as  I  under- 
stand nature,  it  is  wisdom  to  use  her  kindly 
forces  for  our  own  good.  In  unhappiness, 
therefore,  or  distress,  or  misfortune,  it  is  idle 
to  curse  or  repine ;  it  is  more  sensible  to  abide, 
to  wait  until  the  earth  has  got  round  to  the 
other  side  of  her  annual  course  and  see  how 
the  event  will  appear  from  over  there. 

If  to-day  we  are  having  an  era  of  war  and 
greed  and  barbarism,  by  and  by  we  shall  have 
an  era  of  art  and  civilization  again.  Our 
Mother  Nature  does  not  glide  ahead  like  an 
empty  apparition,  but  walks  step  by  step,  like 
any  lovely  human,  constantly  moving  in 
rhythmic  progress. 

We  must  not  interfere  with  nature,  to  do 


116 


violence  to  her  rhythm.  We  must  not  hold 
the  pendulum  back.  But  we  shall  best  serve 
ourselves  by  serving  the  rhythmic  tide  of  natu- 
ral force,  taking  the  current  as  it  turns,  and 
enduring  in  patient  faith  when  it  is  adverse. 
And  we  must  notice  how  all  our  own  small 
lives  imitate  the  great  pattern  of  Nature,  going 
rhythmically  forward  and  not  steadily,  from 
gloom  to  gladness,  despair  to  elation,  success 
to  failure,  and  back  to  success  again.  This 
knowledge  should  make  us  more  ready  and 
willing  to  profit  by  the  favouring  periods,  to 
throw  ourselves  into  the  opportunity  with 
unreluctant  zest,  and  also  to  endure  with  forti- 
tude the  backward  play  of  the  rhythm  of 
power  within  us.  It  should  save  us  from  ulti- 
mate hopelessness  and  the  profoundness  of 
despair. 

Since  it  is  April,  then,  let  me  think  most  of 
the  gladness  and  surging  life  of  April,  and 
let  me  not  think  sad  thoughts  on  Easter  eve. 
Let  me  have  the  confidence  of  all  the  spring 


ii7 


£f)e  mmfyip  of  ^Catutir 

things,  and  abandon  my  spirit  without  a  single 
fear  or  a  moment's  misgiving  to  the  great, 
sure,  benign  power  which  walks  the  world  this 
April  day. 


118 


9prtl  in  Ccfom 


&pnl  in  Eofow 


As  April  draws  to  an  end  one  finds  the 
encompassment  of  streets  and  walls  more  and 
more  irksome.  As  the  sweet  wind  goes  over 
the  city  roofs  of  a  morning  you  look  up  into 
the  pale  warm  spring  sky  and  say,  "  Some- 
where there  is  more  of  this;  I  remember  a 
world  whose  horizon  was  round  and  vague 
and  far  away;  I  recall  the  real  red  colour  of 
the  earth  —  yes,  red  and  green,  not  this  sickly 
gray  of  granite  and  asphalt.  Where  is  that 
country? "  And  there  comes  to  you  Whit- 
man's great  phrase,  "  Afoot  and  light-hearted, 
I  take  to  the  open  road."  The  ancient  imme- 
morial joy  of  a  thousand  departed  Aprils 
stirs  from  its  lurking  sleep  in  those  placid 
veins   of   yours,    and   would   lure   you    away 

121 


Wtyt  Ximstjijj  of  Mature 

beyond  the  limits  of  the  town.  It  is  the  old 
spring  fret  that  moved  myriads  of  your  fel- 
lows long  before,  and  will  move  others  when 
we  are  gone.  But  for  the  ample  moment,  the 
large  sufficient  now,  our  glad  elasticity  of 
spirit,  our  rapturous  exhilaration  of  life,  are 
as  keen  as  if  they  were  to  be  eternal.  Indeed, 
they  are  the  eternal  part  of  us,  of  which  we 
partake  in  these  rare  instants  of  existence. 

Then  as  the  dim  desire  for  change,  the  wild- 
ing wander-lust,  shapes  the  spring-madness 
in  our  brain,  the  longing  grows  definite.  The 
slumbering  love  of  sea  or  mountain,  marsh  or 
dune  or  orchard  land  —  places  we  have 
known,  where  we  have  really  lived  —  puts  off 
the  lethargy  of  winter  and  kindles  the  pulses 
of  the  soul  anew.  How  fruitless  and  wrong 
and  ineffectual  our  tawdry  city  lives  appear! 
Of  what  use  is  it  to  toil  with  so  much  dili- 
gence, to  dress  with  such  elaborate  care? 
Surely  we  have  been  spending  months  in  vain, 
when  one  soft  spring  morning  can  give  our 
whole  scheme  of  living  the  lie!    Where  is  that 

122 


ajuru  in  Eomn 

bright  hour  when  we  loitered  by  the  idle  wash 
of  a  June  tide  along  the  coast  of  Maine,  or 
that  other  memorable  breathing-spell  when 
we  saw  the  frail  circle  of  the  harvest  moon 
among  the  tall  hill-birches?  What  became 
of  the  hermit  thrush  we  once  heard  sending 
his  anthem  down  the  twilight  of  the  firs,  while 
the  air  was  burdened  with  apple  bloom?  And 
where  are  those  changing  sea-pictures,  with 
the  white-sailed  moving  ships,  which  we  used 
to  watch  from  deep  verandas  through  the 
lilac-trees?  Ah,  that  is  the  greatest  memory 
of  all,  —  the  summer  sea!  All  its  wonder  is 
calling  to  us  to-day,  as  we  tarry  in  grimy 
routine  and  dyspeptic  indolence.  It  almost 
seems  as  if  one  would  be  justified  in  breaking 
all  obligations  for  the  sake  of  a  day  by  the 
shore,  when  the  buds  are  unfolding.  But  if 
so  great  a  rebellion  as  that  cannot  be  excused, 
there  are  always  the  docks  and  the  ferries  and 
the  ocean  liners  unlading  in  the  East  River. 
You  may  get  a  breath  of  freedom  there  at  the 
expense  of  an  idle  hour  any  afternoon. 

123 


Careless  j&ature 


Careless  Hature 


AFTER  all,  Nature  takes  very  little  thought 
of  herself.  It  is  our  human  minds  that  are 
retrospective,  brooding,  careworn.  One  may 
question  whether  it  were  not  better  largely  to 
forsake  our  habit  of  questioning  and  live  more 
like  the  creatures.  If  wisdom  lies  inside  the 
door  of  studious  thought,  madness  is  also  sleep- 
ing there;  and  the  mortal  who  knocks  does 
so  at  his  peril.  We  may  become  as  gods  to 
know  good  from  evil ;  but  are  we  sure  that 
happiness  inheres  in  that  knowledge? 

Once  having  turned  his  gaze  inward,  and 
discovered  himself,  man  is  in  the  perplexity 
of  those  adventurous  souls  who  leave  the  old 
world  and  emigrate  to  the  new.  Having 
come    to    their   destination,    the    novelty    and 

127 


Wfyt  ¥Mmt)i#  of  Mature 

spirit  and  brightness  of  the  fresh  life  fascinate 
and  hold  them  for  a  time ;  then  they  tire  of  it, 
and  long  for  the  old  home,  where  they  are  sure 
they  will  be  happy  once  more.  The  same  rest- 
less longing  that  sent  them  forth  on  the  quest, 
sends  them  back  again,  seekers  still.  So  "  over 
the  sea  the  thousand  miles  "  they  fare  after  a 
few  years,  with  their  hearts  set  on  the  old 
ways,  the  old  customs,  the  old  friendships,  the 
old  simple  life.  Do  they  find  it?  Not  at  all. 
The  old  country  is  not  only  different  from  the 
new;  it  is  different  from  its  old  self;  it  has 
changed,  they  think,  while  they  were  away. 
And  yet  it  has  not  changed;  it  is  they  them- 
selves who  have  been  changed  by  their  experi- 
ence. For  it  is  not  altogether  true  that "  caelum 
nan  animum  mutant  qui  trans  mare  currunt;' 
and  travel  does  unfold  and  modify  the  mind. 
Having  beheld  new  worlds,  we  cannot  be  as 
we  were  before.  So  our  emigrants  find  them- 
selves as  dissatisfied  with  the  old  home  as 
they  were  with  the  new.  Thenceforth  they 
live    for    ever    the    victims    of    distraction, 

128 


Careless  Nature 

touched  with  uneasiness  if  they  remain  in  the 
old  world,  not  wholly  at  rest  if  they  reemigrate 
to  the  new. 

Is  this  our  mortal  predicament  since  we  left 
the  green  world  of  nature  and  entered  the 
gray  world  of  thought?  Do  we  not  every  day 
long  to  return,  and  tell  ourselves  tales  of  the 
sweet  simplicity  of  that  natural  life?  Do  we 
not  profess  to  despise  the  self-conscious  and 
introspective  existence?  And  what  is  our  love 
of  the  trees  and  the  birds,  the  sea  and  the  hills 
and  out-of-doors,  but  a  hankering  for  the  old 
creature  life? 

Go  into  the  park  or  the  woods  any  morn- 
ing now,  and  listen  until  you  hear  a  single 
rainbird  soloing  plaintively  above  the  dimmer 
sounds.  At  that  one  touch  of  wild  wood 
magic,  how  uncontemporaneous  and  primi- 
tive we  become!  How  little  matter  our 
worldly  state,  our  clothes  and  carriages,  our 
bills  and  bank  accounts!  That  is  a  strain 
which  pierces  to  the  heart  and  plays  upon  the 
soul.     It  finds  us  as  we  are,  not  as  we  seem. 

129 


£fje  lifusijtj)  of  ttfatttre 

And  unless  we  are  wholly  corrupted  and  sod- 
den with  civilization,  it  wakens  glimmerings 
of  the  golden  age  within  us,  making  us 

"  walk  the  earth  in  rapture ; 
Making  those  who  catch  God's  secret 
Just  so  much  more  prize  their  capture." 

As  that  pealing  cadence  thrills  on  the  damp 
air,  the  world  is  renewed  for  us;  we  pass 
backward  a  thousand  years  to  the  morning  of 
earth,  before  care  and  sorrows  were  begotten, 
before  ever  we  bethought  ourselves  of  retro- 
spect or  inquiry. 


130 


%ty  ^antsmng  Woxti 


S3 


Cije  ^atrtrerincj  ^ortr 


SOMETIMES  it  seems  as  if  words  were  the 
only  realities,  as  if  everything  else  were  fleet- 
ing and  perishable  as  dew.  We  say  in  house- 
hold phrase  that  the  word  that  is  written  re- 
mains, and  we  think  of  our  heritage  of  litera- 
ture. But  the  unwritten  word  has  an  inde- 
structible life  as  well. 

In  the  Old  Book,  where  the  story  of  the 
creation  is  told,  how  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
were  made  in  the  beginning,  it  is  written 
"  God  said."  No  other  way  of  promulgating 
the  vast  elemental  fiat  could  occur  to  the 
imagination.  By  simple  word  of  mouth  the 
revolving  firmament  was  created,  so  that  beau- 
tiful poem  has  it;  and  the  conception  is  a 
tribute  to  the  power  of  the  word.    When  you 

*33 


2Tf)t  liinmjip  of  ^Catttrt 

come  to  revise  that  primitive  notion,  and  sub- 
stitute for  it  some  slow  gigantic  idea  of  evo- 
lution, rational  but  ponderous  and  lumbering, 
much  of  the  wonder  at  first  escapes.  The 
process  seems  so  logical,  the  periods  of  time 
are  so  immeasurably  enormous,  that  one 
hardly  travels  back  to  "  in  the  beginning;  " 
the  mind  is  so  sufficiently  occupied  with  the 
revelations  of  scientific  method,  it  does  not 
note  the  old  ever-present  marvel.  For  the 
sphinx  has  only  retreated  behind  another 
question;  and  our  solution  of  the  riddle  has 
been  found  in  terms  of  still  another  conun- 
drum. 

Follow  the  evolutionary  idea,  the  new  idea 
of  the  creation,  to  its  limits,  and  there  the 
ancient  wonder  resides  as  fresh  and  inscrut- 
ably smiling  as  it  was  in  the  Hebrew  poem. 
The  reason  at  last  runs  back  to  the  power  of 
the  word.  For,  think  of  the  infinite  tribes  of 
the  earth  and  the  sea,  and  the  breeds  of  the 
air;  if  no  voice  said,  "Let  these  creatures 
appear,  each  after  its  kind,"  they  must  have 

*34 


said  to  each  other,  "  Let  us  go  forth  and  pos- 
sess the  earth;"  or  at  least  they  must  have 
said  to  themselves,  each  in  his  heart,  "  Go  to, 
I  will  become."  A  world  without  words  is 
an  unthinkable  world. 

And,  again,  in  the  New  Book  you  may  read 
"  In  the  beginning  was  the  word,  and  the 
word  was  with  God,  and  the  word  was  God." 
This  is  a  more  illumined,  modern,  and  sym- 
bolistic way  of  saying  the  same  thing  that 
the  author  of  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis  said. 
There  was  no  time,  it  seems  to  imply,  when 
expression  and  the  power  of  communication 
did  not  exist;  more  than  that,  there  never  was 
a  time  when  anything  more  potent  than  a 
word  held  sway  over  being.  In  the  Scots 
usage,  "  The  word  is  with  you,"  shifts  the 
obligation  from  speaker  to  hearer,  and  places 
the  credit  where  it  is  due.  And  in  the  phrase, 
"  The  word  was  with  God,"  I  read  the  attri- 
bution of  all  moral  force.  Also,  if  "  the  word 
was  God,"  and  God  is  unchanging,  the  word 
is  still  Lord  of  the  Earth.     Thought,  senti- 

i3S 


£f)e  2;tngl)tj)  of  Kattttt 

ment,  desire,  these  are  our  rulers,  and  they 
have  their  only  embodiment  in  expression.  It 
is  by  the  help  of  the  wandering  word  that  they 
hold  sway  and  move  in  power. 

Before  the  written  speech  was  the  sound 
of  the  voice,  prevailing,  urging,  convincing, 
obtaining  the  individual's  wish  and  swaying 
multitudes  to  a  single  will.  Then  with  print- 
ing came  the  multiplying  of  the  word,  the 
increase  of  the  powers  of  the  unseen.  All  of 
the  fine  arts  are  only  differing  phases  of  the 
word;  they  are  only  so  many  modes  of  ex- 
pression, signals  of  the  spirit  across  gulfs  of 
silence.  And  our  Titan  of  the  century,  me- 
chanical invention,  what  is  the  end  of  all  its 
labour  but  to  bring  men  face  to  face  more 
rapidly,  that  they  may  speak  what  they  know, 
or  to  carry  their  thought  abroad  with  the 
swiftness  of  light? 

So  now,  when  the  vernal  sun  is  warming  the 
earth,  and  April  is  spreading  up  the  sloping 
world  with  resurrection,  by  what  magic  is  the 
transformation  wrought?     In  the  dim  nether 

136 


glooms  of  the  deep  sea  all  the  fin  people  have 
received  the  summons;  the  unrest  has  taken 
hold  of  them,  —  the  fever  of  migration;  and 
the  myriad  hosts  from  the  green  Floridian 
water  and  azure  Carib  calms  gather  and 
move;  surely  and  swiftly  they  come,  through 
the  soundless,  trackless  spaces  under  the 
broken  whitish  day,  up  to  the  cool  fresh  rivers 
and  the  pools  of  the  North.  How  did  they 
know  the  date?  By  instinct?  But  what  is 
that?  The  communication  came  to  them,  in- 
explicably as  it  comes  to  us,  —  the  unuttered 
word,  the  presage,  the  portent.  And  their 
brothers  the  birds,  too;  already  they  are  here, 
hard  on  the  heels  of  the  retreating  frost,  every 
tribe  with  its  cohorts  full  and  overflowing; 
from  tree  to  tree,  from  state  to  state,  the  long 
unnoted  procession  comes  up  through  the 
night.  How  they  started,  how  they  guessed 
the  hour  of  departure,  we  can  only  dimly  sur- 
mise. Their  movements  are  as  mysterious  as 
our  own,  their  whim  as  undiscoverable.  Yet 
to   them,   too,   the   message   must  have   gone 

*37 


ED*  Mn#t)ip  of  Xatttre 

abroad.  To  say  that  the  word  went  forth 
among  them  is  to  use  the  simplest  and  most 
elemental  imagery. 

The  word  is  that  which  has  both  meaning 
and  melody,  both  sense  and  semblance;  it  is 
that  which  informs  us;  it  is  neither  matter 
alone,  nor  spirit  alone,  but  the  dual  manifesta- 
tion of  the  two  in  one.  It  is  the  symbol  of  the 
universe  that  we  perceive,  and  the  universe 
that  we  are.  The  Word  is  the  Lord  of  Crea- 
tion, the  unresting  master  of  life,  the  great 
vagabond,  our  substantial  brother  and  ghostly 
friend. 

I  knew  a  man  who  was  a  writer  by  trade, 
and  one  day  in  conversation  I  heard  a  friend 
say  to  him  in  the  course  of  their  talk,  "  Don't 
you  really  love  a  word  better  than  anything 
else  in  the  world?"  But  this  monstrous  no- 
tion he  stoutly  repudiated,  almost  with  indig- 
nation, I  thought.  Years  afterward,  however, 
he  reminded  me  of  the  incident,  and  said  that 
he  had  never  quite  escaped  from  that  sugges- 
tion, —  that  he  often  feared  it  was  true. 

13* 


Cije  jfrtettUsijtp  of  Jlature 


Ci)£  fwntejjip  of  Hature 


Is  not  our  love  of  Nature  only  the  sentiment 
of  abounding  vitality  and  rugged  self-reli- 
ance? In  his  prime  a  man  is  unacquainted 
with  fear,  his  look  is  outward  upon  the  bright 
changing  face  of  the  earth,  so  fresh,  so  beau- 
tiful, so  untouched  by  time,  so  vigorous,  so 
unafraid.  He  may  have  a  genius  for  society 
and  spend  his  useful  life  in  one  of  a  thousand 
glittering  successful  ways,  with  hardly  a 
thought  for  nature;  or  he  may  have  a  genius 
for  solitude  and  introspection,  and  walk  apart 
from  his  fellows,  "  a  lover  of  the  forest  ways." 
The  trees  and  the  hills  may  appeal  to  him, 
and  the  sea  tell  him  wonderful  stories  with 
its  old  monotonous  voice,  so  that  he  is  content 
and  even  happy  by  himself  with  little  human 

141 


ftfje  Wtintyip  of  Xatttre 

companionship.  To-day  is  enough  for  him; 
the  birds  are  his  musicians,  and  he  has  said 
in  his  heart,  "  I  will  commune  with  the  Great 
Mother."  And  so  long  as  he  is  young  and 
well,  with  that  temperament,  his  solitary 
habit  may  suffice,  and  in  lonely  silence  he 
may  find  solace  for  the  common  griefs  and 
disappointments  of  men. 

But  let  him  fall  for  an  hour  below  the 
normal  level  of  health,  let  the  sudden  sweeping 
cut  of  sickness  come  upon  him,  and  the  pith 
of  all  his  brave  credulity  will  melt  away.  His 
adored  monitor  and  mistress  cannot  break  her 
adamantine  silence  for  the  sake  of  one  poor 
mortal;  he  no  longer  finds  in  her  countenance 
the  sympathy  he  fancied  was  resident  there;  in 
truth  it  was  no  more  than  the  shadow  of  his 
own  exceeding  great  desire  and  superabun- 
dant vitality;  and  now  that  the  need  of  help 
or  sympathy  or  understanding  is  come,  he 
must  turn  to  his  own  kind. 

There  is  in  reality  a  power  in  Nature  to 
rest  and  console  us;   but  few  are  so  strong  as 

142 


&$*  iFrfmlrsfjijj  of  Nature 

to  be  able  to  rely  on  that  lonely  beneficence; 
and  we  must  seek  the  gentler  aid  of  our  fellow 
beings.  Indeed,  only  those  who  are  humane 
at  heart  can  rightly  hear  the  obscure  word  of 
Nature;  while  those  who  have  been  reared 
not  far  from  the  wild  school  of  the  forest 
make  the  best  citizens  and  friends. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  boon  that  we  can  re- 
ceive from  Nature  is  health.  Our  friendship 
with  her  should  give  us  sanity  first  of  all.  The 
strain  of  life  in  these  days  in  our  cities  is  apt 
to  become  excessive  in  two  directions:  We  are 
apt  to  become  wholly  engrossed  in  affairs  and 
suffer  from  sheer  physical  exhaustion,  or  we 
may  become  too  completely  and  dangerously 
detached  from  the  current  interests  of  exist- 
ence. Either  one  may  mean  madness  and 
death.  But  a  daily  contact  with  the  elements, 
with  elemental  conditions  of  being  —  sun- 
shine, and  rain,  and  roads,  and  honest  grass, 
and  the  swish  of  winds  in  the  trees  —  is  a 
sedative  and  tonic  in  one.  To  know  the  kind- 
liness of  Nature  we  must  take  constant  care  to 

-43 


Stye  Irtnsljfii  of  Nature 

abide  by  her  customs,  not  to  hurry  over  duty 
nor  to  tarry  too  long,  but  to  move  with  the 
appointed  rhythm  she  has  bestowed  upon  us, 
each  man  true  to  his  own  measure,  and  so  in 
accord  with  his  fellows  and  not  at  variance 
with  the  purpose  of  creation. 


144 


>ttbconsctous  Srt 


Sufrcottsriotts  gfrt 


THERE  is  a  general  recognition  of  the  fact, 
but  no  clear  comprehension  of  the  power,  of 
subconsciousness  expressing  itself  in  various 
forms  of  art.  We  readily  recognize  in  a 
painting,  a  poem,  a  piece  of  music,  the  pres- 
ence of  a  force  ("  a  something"  we  are  likely 
to  call  it),  which  we  do  not  readily  define. 
We  say  perhaps  that  the  picture  has  soul;  it 
sways  us,  we  know  not  why;  it  allures  us,  we 
cannot  tell  how.  A  too  exact  critic  might  per- 
haps ridicule  our  susceptibility  to  a  vague 
charm  we  could  not  pretend  to  understand. 
His  very  philosophic  and  rational  mind  would 
insist  on  clarity,  on  definiteness.  For  him  the 
painting  must  be  logical,  conclusive,  limpid. 
But  somehow,  we  say,  we  do  not  care  whether 

H7 


it  means  anything  or  not,  so  long  as  it  moves 
us  pleasurably.  We  can  enjoy  Browning's 
"  Child  Roland  "  or  William  Morris's  "  Blue 
Closet  "  without  asking  what  they  mean.  And 
we  are  right,  too.  Art  does  not  always  have 
to  mean  something  obvious.  Some  poetry  is 
addressed  to  the  mind  and  some  is  not.  The 
best  poetry,  of  course,  addresses  the  mind  and 
emotions  as  well.  But  just  as  a  deal  of  good 
poetry  has  been  written  which  appeals  chiefly 
to  the  rational  self  in  us  (nearly  all  of  Pope 
and  Dryden,  for  example),  so  a  good  deal 
has  been  written  which  appeals  to  our  irra- 
tional instinctive  self.  And  indeed,  in  all 
poetry,  even  the  most  rational,  there  are  cer- 
tain qualities  which  pass  the  threshold  of  the 
outer  mind  and  pass  in  to  sway  the  mysterious 
subconscious  person  who  inhabits  us. 

The  most  obvious  of  the  qualities  in  poetry, 
is  the  metre  or  rhythm.  The  measure  of  verse 
has  an  influence  on  us  beyond  our  reckoning, 
potent  and  ever  present,  though  unrecognized. 
So  that  the  simplest,  most  unexalted  statement 

148 


of  truth,  commonplace  though  it  be,  if  once 
thrown  into  regular  verse,  comes  to  us  with 
an  added  force.  Perhaps  I  should  say  with 
a  new  force.  It  may  not  make  a  statement 
any  plainer  to  our  mind,  to  versify  it;  it  may 
not  make  it  any  stronger  mentally;  but  it  gives 
it  a  power  and  influence  of  a  sort  it  did  not 
possess  before.  This  added  power  is  one  of 
the  things  that  distinguish  poetry  from  prose, 
—  art  from  science.  Now  the  principle  of  re- 
currence is  the  underlying  principle  of  rhythm 
and  metre  and  rhyme  and  alliteration.  And 
I  wonder  whether  this  constant  reiteration, 
this  regular  pulsing  recurrence  in  poetry,  does 
not  act  as  a  mesmeric  or  hypnotic  agent. 

It  is  quite  true  that  good  art  is  the  expres- 
sion, not  only  of  the  rational  waking  objective 
self,  the  self  which  is  clever  and  intentional 
and  inductive,  but  of  the  deeper  unreasoning 
self,  as  well.  It  is  also  true  that  good  art 
impresses  the  deeper  as  well  as  the  shallower 
self.  The  outer  objective  self  may  be  ex- 
tremely brilliant,  may  master  technique  and 

149 


2Ttje  Xiiustjip  of  Xatttre 

become  skilled  in  every  lore  of  the  craft,  may, 
indeed,  become  as  masterful  in  execution  as 
the  masters  themselves,  and  yet  if  it  have  not 
the  aid  of  a  great  strong  inner  subjective,  un- 
conscious self,  it  can  do  nothing  of  permanent 
human  interest.  You  know  how  accurate  a 
draughtsman  may  be,  and  how  learned  in 
anatomy,  and  yet  how  dismal  and  uninspired 
his  paintings  after  all.  You  know  what  bril- 
liant execution  a  pianist  may  have,  and  yet 
how  cold  his  recitals  may  leave  you.  This  is 
the  achievement  of  intentional  mind  unas- 
sisted by  the  subconscious  spirit.  And  neces- 
sary as  it  is,  it  is  not  alone  sufficient. 

To  attain  the  best  results  in  art  we  must 
have  both  the  personalities  of  the  artist  work- 
ing at  once.  All  the  skill  which  training  and 
study  can  give  must  be  at  his  command,  to 
serve  as  the  alphabet  or  medium  of  his  art, 
and  at  the  same  time  the  submerged,  unsleep- 
ing self  must  be  set  free  for  active  creation. 
Scientific  formulae  are  an  admirable  means  of 
communication  between  mind  and  mind,  but 

150 


Subconscious  &rt 

art  is  a  means  of  communication  for  the  whole 
being,  —  mind,  body  and  spirit. 

This  being  so,  it  is  necessary,  in  doing  any 
creative  work,  to  cultivate  the  power  of  sub- 
merging our  useful,  objective  self  far  enough 
to  give  free  play  to  the  greater  subjective  self, 
the  self  beyond  the  threshold.  This  is  exactly 
what  occurs  in  hypnosis,  and  I  dare  say  the 
beat  and  rhythm  of  poetry  serves  just  such  a 
purpose. 

"  Dearest,  three  months  ago, 
When  the  mesmerizer  Snow 
With  his  hand's  first  sweep 
Put  the  earth  to  sleep  —  " 

In  these  lines  of  Browning's  there  resides,  I 
am  certain,  a  power  like  that  that  he  describes. 
It  resides  in  all  poetry.  It  is  the  magic  we  feel 
but  cannot  fathom,  the  charm  we  must  follow, 
discredit  it  as  we  may. 

Apply  this  test  to  any  good  piece  of  poetry 
of  which  you  are  fond.  Take  Tennyson's 
"  Crossing  the  Bar,"  for  instance.  That  poem 
appeals  to  our  mind  with  a  definite  idea,  a 

lSl 


&ije  l\im\yw  of  Mature 

definite  image,  which  you  may  easily  trans- 
pose into  prose.  The  poem  might  be  trans- 
lated without  loss  of  the  thought.  But  what 
of  the  magic  charm  of  the  lines: 

"  For  though  the  flood  may  bear  me  beyond  the  bound- 
ary of  time, 

I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot's  face  when  I  shall  have  crossed 
the  bar." 

I  have  not  altered  the  thought,  but  I  have 
destroyed  the  stanza.  The  spell  has  vanished 
with  the  metre.  The  reason  that  Tennyson's 
verse  is  more  pleasing  than  our  mangled  ver- 
sion of  it  is  this  —  simply  that  it  speaks  to  us 
more  completely.  It  not  only  appeals  to  our 
intelligence,  but  it  appeals  to  our  sense  and 
soul  as  well.  The  soul  has  memories  of  regions 
and  lives  of  which  we  have  never  heard.  The 
soul  dwells  with  us  as  tacitly  as  a  silent  com- 
panion who  should  share  our  habitation  for 
years,  yet  never  reveal  the  secrets  of  his  earlier 
life.  And  good  poetry  and  good  art  have 
much  to  say  to  this  work-a-day  understanding 

152 


Subconscious  3rt 

of  ours;  yet  they  have  more  to  say  to  the  soul 
within  us,  which  comprehends  everything. 
The  difficulty  is  in  obtaining  access  to  the 
soul  and  securing  egress  for  it.  The  creative 
artist  must  subordinate  cunning  to  intuition, 
and  he  must  embody  his  beautiful  creations  in 
some  form  that  will  be  able  to  elude  the  too 
vigilant  reason  of  his  fellows  and  gain  instant 
access  to  their  spirit. 

If  I  were  a  poet  I  should  not  merely  wish 
to  set  down  my  conclusions  about  life  and  the 
universe;  I  could  accomplish  that  better  by 
being  a  trained  philosopher.  I  should  not 
merely  want  to  convey  to  you  new  and  impor- 
tant facts  of  nature;  I  could  do  that  better 
by  being  a  scientist.  I  should  not  want  to  con- 
vince your  mind  only,  for  I  could  do  that  bet- 
ter by  logic  and  rhetoric.  But  I  should  wish 
to  do  all  these  things  and  to  win  your  sympa- 
thy as  well.  I  should  not  only  wish  to  make 
you  believe  what  I  say,  but  to  believe  it  pas- 
sionately, —  with  your  whole  heart.  In  order 
to  do  this  I  should  have  to  secure  free  com- 

iS3 


Efje  liin$t)i&  of  Nature 

munication  of  spirit,  as  well  as  of  mind.  I 
should  not  only  have  to  satisfy  reason,  I 
should  have  to  lull  and  charm  it.  I  should 
have  to  hypnotize  that  good  warder  of  your 
house  before  he  would  allow  me  to  enter.  Just 
as  I  had  to  mesmerize  myself  with  the  cadence 
of  my  lines  before  I  could  fully  make  them 
express  my  whole  nature,  so  you  in  your  turn 
as  reader  would  have  to  feel  their  undefinable 
magic  before  you  could  appreciate  and  enjoy 
my  poems  to  the  utmost  capacity  of  your  na- 
ture. I  could  only  secure  this  result  through 
the  senses,  through  the  monotonous  music  of 
my  verse. 

This  may  seem  to  you  nothing  more  than  the 
wisdom  of  the  snake-charmer.  Well,  that  is 
all  it  is.     But  that  is  enough. 


«54 


ta&oarti  an*  Utiitoarti 


Seafioartr  atrtr  ilillipartr 


If  it  ever  happens  to  you  to  pass  quickly 
from  the  sea  to  the  mountains,  and  if  you  care 
to  note  the  subtler  psychical  phenomena,  I 
am  sure  you  must  have  experienced  more  than 
the  gross  change  of  air;  you  must  have  been 
conscious  of  a  translation  from  the  emotional 
realm  to  the  realm  of  pure  thought,  from  the 
region  of  feeling  to  the  region  of  mentality. 

That  there  are  three  and  only  three  zones 
of  life,  the  physical,  the  mental,  and  the  spir- 
itual, is  quite  certain;  and  that  the  last  two 
of  these  correspond  to  the  zones  of  ocean  and 
hill,  I  think  very  probable;  but  whether  the 
other,  the  physical  zone,  corresponds  to  the 
zone  of  plain  and  level,   I   am  not  so  sure. 

'57 


STJjt  Irtufityiji  of  Xaturt 

Think,  however,  how  evidently  true  it  is 
that  the  sea  is  the  great  nourisher  of  imagina- 
tion, the  stimulator  of  romance,  and  how  all 
her  border  people  have  been  the  originators 
and  creative  artists  of  the  world.  There  is 
something  in  the  sea's  air  which  breeds  emo- 
tion; it  is  strong  and  vitalizing;  those  who 
breathe  it  have  bulk  and  stamina;  while  the 
dwellers  on  mountains  must  content  them- 
selves with  the  thin  dry  stimulant  which 
blows  between  their  pine  slopes.  Your  hills- 
man  is  proverbially  lanky,  more  a  creature  of 
moods  than  of  passions;  and  in  the  elemental 
sorrow  which  seems  to  invest  him,  you  may 
detect  the  overweight  of  thought,  the  lack  of 
emotion.  For  generations  aloof  from  the 
business  of  the  world  below  him,  he  has  main- 
tained the  solitary  and  egocentric  life;  he  has 
found  little  outlet  for  his  selfhood  either  in 
action  or  passion;  the  free  intercourse  with 
his  kind  has  been  lacking;  and  that  portion  of 
his  nature  which  flourishes  most  easily  alone, 
the  mental  part  of  him,  has  held  its  own  un- 

158 


diminished  and  undiverted  existence,  com- 
menting with  the  lofty  solitude  about  it  and 
brooding  through  vast  stretches  of  leisurely 
silence  on  its  own  being.  He  is  become  the 
shy,  sensitive,  individualized  creature  to 
whom  sociability  is  a  panic,  and  achievement 
a  miracle.  He  undertakes  almost  nothing  and 
accomplishes  still  less.  A  hunter  and  trapper 
all  his  days,  he  is  willing  to  do  with  a  bare 
subsistence,  if  only  he  be  not  forced  to  mingle 
with  men,  to  merge  his  identity  with  that  of 
his  fellow,  to  pass  from  his  own  wilding 
sphere,  into  the  hurly-burly  of  competition 
and  association.  The  advance  of  civilization 
leaves  him  out;  he  watches  with  bright  eyes 
from  his  roadside  solitude,  while  the  pageant 
of  progress  goes  by  with  dust  and  blare.  If 
he  ever  found  a  voice,  he  would  be  the  prince 
of  critics.  That  cold,  dry  nature  would  sit 
unmoved  to  judge  the  tumultuous  events  about 
him.  He  would  see  the  outcome  and  signifi- 
cance of  that  strenuous  process  of  develop- 
ment, which  he  is  so  ill-fitted  to  share.  Others, 

l59 


Eije  liinst)!*)  of  Mature 

with  their  full,  ruddy  life,  would  originate  a 
thousand  works  of  beauty  and  utility,  while 
he  still  dreamed;  but  at  the  last  their  hasty 
activities  and  imperfect  aims  would  come 
under  his  judicial  view  for  blame  or  com- 
mendation,—  the  affairs  of  action  and  the  af- 
fairs of  sentiment  brought  to  the  ultimate  test 
of  implacable  reason. 

Not  so  with  your  dweller  by  the  bountiful 
sea.  With  the  world's  blue  highway  leading 
past  his  door,  with  the  traffic  of  the  nations 
of  the  earth  going  forward  continually  under 
his  blue  eyes,  this  man  is  no  solitary.  His 
power  of  detachment  is  small.  He  is  a  spec- 
tator, indeed,  of  the  tragedies  of  storm  and  the 
endless  drama  of  the  tideways  of  the  deep, 
but  he  seldom  can  refrain  from  taking  part 
in  that  fascinating  and  enormous  play.  From 
a  child  he  is  accustomed  to  ships,  and  his 
nursery  tales  are  stories  of  adventure.  The 
sunlit  and  limitless  highroads  call  him  eter- 
nally to  vaster  chances  and  unexplored  lands. 
The  strange   new   tokens   of   foreign    people 

1 60 


Seafcoartr  antr  ©illtoartr 

come  home  in  his  father's  chests;  his  daily 
walk  is  among  innumerable  reminders  of 
civilizations  and  customs  not  his  own.  To 
live  the  inward,  secluded  life  solely  is  not 
possible  to  this  child  of  seafarers;  his  emo- 
tions are  enlisted  strongly  in  the  doings  of  his 
kind  at  home  and  over  sea;  the  life  he  knows 
is  not  a  mere  tissue  of  mental  phenomena,  a 
panorama  running  before  his  mind;  it  has 
a  grip  on  his  vitals;  his  emotional  experience 
is  full;  and  from  that  fulness  of  rich  being 
there  spring  the  unnumbered  creations  of  the 
active  spirit.  It  were  impossible  for  so  abun- 
dant an  enrichment  of  the  character  not  to 
find  vent  in  the  flowering  of  expression,  not 
to  embody  itself  in  art. 

The  Greeks,  the  Venetians,  the  French,  the 
English,  —  these  masters  of  the  sea  have  been 
the  masters  of  artistic  creation  as  well.  And 
their  wonderful  contributions  to  the  treasure- 
house  of  the  world  are  not  to  be  matched  by 
any  mountain  folk  whatever.     So  much  one 


161 


&%t  £tinst)tj)  of  Xatttre 

may  deduce  from  history;  and  I  am  inclined 
to  believe  that  a  careful  consideration  of  per- 
sonal experience  would  confirm  an  idea  which 
may  seem  a  trifle  fanciful  at  first. 


16-2 


%ty  Courtesy  of  jSature 


Cjje  Cmtrtestj  of  Mature 


PERHAPS  one  of  the  things  that  charm  us 
most,  as  we  come  back  each  year  to  the  green 
world  out  of  the  stress  of  our  city  life,  is  the 
great  courtesy  of  nature,  if  one  may  call  it 
so.  For  her  laws,  though  inexorable,  and  even 
ruthless  at  times,  are  none  the  less  gentle.  I 
doubt  if  there  is  cruelty  in  nature.  We  must 
wait  until  man  appears  and  evil  is  born  into 
the  world,  before  we  find  anything  of  malice 
or  greed  in  creation. 

It  is  truly  a  state  of  war,  in  which  all  the 
wild  things  live,  whether  they  dress  in  leaf 
or  skin,  fur,  feather,  bark,  or  scale.  The  un- 
ceasing struggle  for  self-preservation  and  the 
perpetuation  of  kind  is  veiled  but  real.    And 

i65 


great  nature,  which  looks  to  the  casual  eye  so 
calm,  so  unstirring,  so  saturated  with  content 
and  repose  and  the  essence  of  peace,  is  actually 
in  hourly  ferment  of  strife.  To  our  house- 
bred  sentiment,  it  seems  a  pathetic  thing  that 
every  wild  creature  should  die  a  violent  death. 
But,  after  all,  what  better  fate  could  befall 
it  than  to  render  its  life  up  for  the  preserva- 
tion of  other  life  more  complex,  more  active, 
more  intelligent  than  its  own?  It  is  only  man 
who  kills  wantonly.  The  beasts  that  live  by 
killing  kill  only  as  hunger  bids. 

I  think  we  feel  the  influence  of  such  natural 
benignity  in  our  pleasures  of  the  open  air. 
One  may  say,  without  being  misanthropic,  that 
the  greatest  joy  in  nature  is  the  absence  of 
man.  For  in  our  retreat  to  the  woods  we 
escape  what  is  basest  in  ourselves;  our  fellow 
mortals  are  not  thrust  upon  us  so  closely;  we 
have  room  and  time  to  choose  our  compan- 
ions; and  we  forget  for  awhile  the  cruelty  of 
fear  and  greed. 

I  know  the  theme  is  deeper  than  I  can  go. 

166 


STlje  <&ouvtt&8  of  Nature 

The  great  dilemma  of  humanity  is  not  to  be 
solved  offhand.  And  there  remains,  after  all, 
our  hand-to-hand  strife  for  a  living,  in  which 
the  weak  go  to  the  wall.  I  do  think,  however, 
that  we  might  learn  a  lesson  from  that  great 
nature  which  seems  so  impersonal,  and  some- 
times so  reckless  of  life.  We  might  learn  the 
courtesy  of  tolerance. 

Here  is  our  city  life,  our  modern  modus 
vivendi,  mitigate  it  as  we  please,  a  veiled  yet 
ruthless  encounter  man  to  man,  —  a  strife  to 
the  death.  You  may  cushion  your  pews  and 
deaden  your  walls,  and  replenish  your  table 
from  the  ends  of  the  earth;  you  may  lull 
yourself  with  sermons  and  salve  your  con- 
science by  founding  charlatan  colleges  and 
establishing  impertinent  charities;  but  the 
fact  remains  that  men  and  women  are  being 
worked  to  death  in  order  that  you  and  I  may 
have  our  luxuries. 

"Well,  what  then?  This  is  no  more  than 
happens  in  a  state  of  nature,"  you  say.  Yes, 
it  is  more.     For  in  nature  one  is  content  with 

167 


£!)*  Ziiusijij)  of  Nature 

enough;  in  civilization  one  is  never  content. 
One  of  the  chief  characteristics  that  we  seem 
to  have  brought  with  us  from  an  earlier  stage 
of  existence  is  the  baleful  heritage  of  fear. 
Indeed  we  seem  to  have  cherished  and  de- 
veloped it  past  all  need.  It  is  fear  that  is 
at  the  root  of  all  cruelty  and  greed,  the  two 
evils  that  most  disgrace  the  life  of  man. 
Under  primitive  conditions,  the  dangers  to  life 
are  greater,  and  the  chances  of  security  less; 
so  that  it  behooves  the  savage  to  go  warily. 
Fear  is  his  vigilant  warden.  But  as  he  makes 
progress  toward  the  amenities  of  a  more  civi- 
lized existence,  surely,  one  might  suppose, 
fear  would  be  the  first  trait  he  would  lose. 
For  the  first  great  boon  of  his  advancement 
must  be  immunity  from  danger.  The  first 
good  that  comes  to  him  from  combining  in  a 
recognized  structure  of  society,  however 
crude,  must  be  security  of  life.  He  can  have 
less  and  less  need  of  fear  as  a  delicate  instant 
monitor  for  self-preservation.  Unfortunately, 
this  is  not  so.     Instead  of  laying  aside  fear, 

168 


2Tfje  &ottrttsg  of  Mature 

we  have  developed  new  desires,  absurd  and 
unthought-of  requirements,  that  can  only  be 
satisfied,  as  they  increase,  by  ever-increasing 
acquisitions  of  property  and  stores  of  wealth 
wrung  from  the  earth.  Nor  is  this  enough; 
we  are  still  not  satisfied  with  what  we  can 
earn  by  labour;  we  must  plunder  from  our 
weaker  fellows,  outwitting  them  in  relentless 
guile;  until  in  the  midst  of  plenty  the  struggle 
for  a  bare  existence  is  as  fierce  as  it  ever  was 
among  the  tribes  of  our  predecessors. 

Very  likely  this  vigorous  process  of  social 
and  individual  evolution  is  productive  of 
some  good  qualities;  we  are  not  likely  to  be- 
come lazy  under  it;  none  the  less  it  seems  to 
common  sense  terribly  wasteful,  as  wasteful 
as  the  processes  of  nature.  And  if  we  are 
not  to  devise  means  to  better  nature,  if  we  are 
not  to  use  our  intelligence  for  purposes  more 
benign  than  those  of  the  pre-human  and  sub- 
human creation,  I  can  form  no  notion  of  the 
proper  use  of  mind  at  all.  You  may  tell  me 
that  the  inexorable  law  of  nature  has   pro- 

169 


art)*  ixin&Wp  of  Xaturt 

vided  for  progress  by  the  simple  means  of 
preserving  the  fittest  to  survive,  and  that  in 
human  society  we  merely  follow  the  same 
methods.  But  I  say  that  the  laws  of  nature 
can  offer  the  soul  no  criterion  for  conduct.  I 
only  exist  to  temper  the  occurrences  of  nature, 
to  deflect  them  to  my  own  needs,  and  to  alter 
my  own  human  nature  continually  for  the 
better.  I  do  not  know  what  the  soul  is,  but 
I  know  that  it  exists;  and  I  know  that  its 
admonitions  form  a  more  beautiful  sanction 
for  conduct  than  the  primitive  code  of  evolu- 
tion taken  alone.  But  I  do  not  believe  that  in 
our  finer  moments  we  shall  find  any  fault 
with  nature,  though  we  shall  find  a  taint  in 
ourselves.  I  believe  that  we  must  in  a  large 
measure  reverse  the  law  of  selection  when 
we  reach  human  society,  but  that  at  the  same 
time  we  must  remain  nearer  to  nature  in  many 
ways  than  we  are  accustomed  to  do. 

I  do  not  see  any  greed  in  nature.  I  do  not 
find  any  creature  fighting  for  more  than  it 
actually  needs  at  the  moment.     I  do  not  see 

170 


ULty  (ftottrtesg  of  ^fatutt 

any  cruelty  in  nature,  any  wanton  destruction, 
except  among  those  primitive  voters,  our  ar- 
boreal ancestors,  the  apes.  But  that  is  the 
taint  of  human  ingenuity  beginning  to  ap- 
pear. I  find  in  the  world  of  green  unflinching 
responsibility,  abiding  perdurable  patience, 
and  a  courtesy  that  is  too  large,  too  sure,  for 
the  cruelty  and  greed  of  man. 


i?i 


Ct)e  Hujrurp  of  Being  $oor 


Ei)e  Cuxunj  of  28ctnu$oor 


At  first  thought  you  would  say  that  the 
luxury  of  being  poor,  like  the  luxury  of  going 
barefoot,  is  only  a  luxury  when  it  is  not  a 
necessity.  But  that  statement  is  too  epigram- 
matic for  the  sober  truth.  And  truth  is  a  god- 
dess whose  beauty  best  appears  in  diaphanous 
simplicity,  without  the  oriental  broideries  of 
the  too  curious  and  too  civilized  mind.  It  is 
nearer  the  truth  to  say  that  as  there  is  always 
an  actual  luxury  in  going  barefoot,  so  there 
always  is  an  actual  luxury  in  being  poor.  If 
we  do  not  always  relish  being  poor,  it  is  be- 
cause we  do  not  appreciate  our  blessings. 

I  am  sorry  for  any  one  who  cannot  afford 
to  be  poor.  Certainly  to  enjoy  the  luxury  to 
the  fullest  extent  one  must  be  a  gentleman  or 

175 


<TtK  Itiugfji?  of  Xaturr 

a  genius.  But  even  without  either  of  these 
advantages  there  is  cause  for  thanksgiving  in 
a  modest  amount  of  poverty.  If  you  are  poor, 
think  of  the  endless  burden  of  impediments  of 
all  sorts  you  escape  from  day  to  day,  —  houses, 
servants,  tailors,  teas,  —  a  thousand  cares  and 
annoyances  which  press  upon  the  rich  and 
crush  them  back  into  the  fat  clay  from  which 
they  came.  There  are  rich  people  who  are 
good,  and  there  are  rich  people  who  are 
happy,  but  they  are  so  at  how  great  a  cost! 
It  is  the  old  story  of  the  savage  over  again. 
"Why  don't  you  work?"  "What  for?" 
"  So  that  you  may  be  rich."  "  Why  should  I 
wish  to  be  rich?"  "So  that  you  need  do 
nothing."    "  But  I  do  nothing  now." 

If  you  are  rich  you  cannot  be  free.  You 
have  obligations  you  cannot  shirk.  But  the 
greatest  freedom  of  the  poor  is  the  freedom 
of  spirit.  If  I  am  poor,  I  am  not  obliged  to 
be  always  on  parade,  always  living  at  a  ten- 
sion, always  presenting  an  appearance.  My 
outward  circumstance  is  so  insignificant  that 

i76 


&t}t  attptttrg  of  Otitis  $oor 

I  can  forget  it  altogether  and  occupy  my  mind 
with  the  higher  life.  That  is  why  it  is  good 
for  a  philosopher  to  be  poor,  —  he  has  noth- 
ing to  divert  him  from  his  noblest  self.  He 
may  have  the  luxury  of  a  free  and  untram- 
melled life.  Voluntary  poverty,  such  as  that 
of  the  ecclesiastical  orders,  is  a  great  positive 
virtue  and  a  means  of  happiness.  The  mere 
act  of  renunciation  in  itself  is  no  virtue.  If 
you  forego  the  pleasure  of  a  new  gown,  and 
still  keep  hankering  after  it,  that  is  no  virtue, 
and  does  you  little  good.  But  if  you  abstain 
from  buying  it,  saying  to  yourself,  "  Thank 
Heaven,  I  am  free  from  one  more  encum- 
brance," you  are  already  on  the  road  to  the 
Celestial  City. 

In  order  to  have  the  goods  of  this  world 
you  must  be  strenuous,  unsleeping,  given  to 
hard  work.  You  must  will  and  energize  day 
in  and  day  out.  You  must  impose  your  way 
on  others,  and  bend  them  to  your  purpose. 
You  must  strive  and  never  rest.  (Unless,  of 
course,    you    are    dishonest,    and    make   your 

177 


£tje  Izinnljip  of  Xaturt 

money  instead  of  earning  it.)  And  for  most 
people  who  are  cast  into  the  world  with  re- 
sponsibility already  upon  them,  such  a  life 
of  endeavour  is  necessary.  Others  may  be 
depending  upon  them,  —  the  aged,  the  help- 
less, the  unfortunate.  They  cannot  shun  the 
demands  of  humanity.  They  dare  not  indulge 
their  own  love  of  freedom.  They  cannot 
afford  to  be  poor. 

But  if  no  one  worked,  we  should  have  few 
of  the  decencies  of  life,  our  climate  being 
what  it  is.  Yes,  I  know  that.  I  am  not  cham- 
pioning any  fundamental  philosophy.  I  am 
only  insisting  that  we  do  not  appreciate  the 
luxury  of  freedom  there  is  in  poverty. 

Cease  to  worry.  Do  not  try  to  reason  your- 
self into  submission.  Just  dismiss  your  will 
entirely.  Let  it  go  out  and  play.  Forget  it. 
Then  you  may  truly  begin  to  live  the  greater 
life.  Your  own  inner  truer  personality  will 
have  time  and  space  to  grow.  You  will 
breathe  more  freely  and  feel  yourself  a  part 
of    larger    life.      If    poverty   only   makes   us 

178 


Eije  ZLuvuvg  of  tfeftia  jpoov 

strive  the  harder  (not  work,  but  strive)  then 
it  is  a  curse  and  not  a  blessing.  But  that 
depends  on  our  own  mind.  To  be  able  to 
enjoy  this  beautiful  earth  and  our  strange, 
rich,  wonderful  life,  it  is  necessary  to  be  free, 
to  keep  a  spirit  untrammelled  by  outward 
things  and  untarnished  by  error.  To  be 
soured  by  poverty  or  to  be  hardened  by  it  is 
a  mistake,  an  error  of  thought.  Instead  of 
enjoying  our  life,  we  are  cramping  ourselves. 
It  is  just  as  if  we  were  set  at  a  feast  and  sulkily 
refused  to  enjoy  a  few  dishes  because  we  could 
not  reach  everything  on  the  table  and  make 
ourselves  sick,  like  foolish  children  that  we 
are. 

Children  do  not  mind  poverty.  It  is  not 
until  they  grow  and  cultivate  their  wilful 
individuality,  that  unhappiness  and  discontent 
overtake  them.  It  is  in  their  disregard  of  cir- 
cumstance that  we  still  may  imitate  them. 
They  enjoy  being  barefoot  and  having  noth- 
ing, until  some  mistaken  grown-up  makes 
them  ashamed  of  it. 

J79 


arije  litusijU)  of  Mature 

O  artist,  know  that  unless  you  can  afford  to 
be  poor,  you  can  never  reach  the  full  height 
of  your  power.  You  can  never  abandon  strife, 
and  insistence,  and  your  own  small  worldly 
will.  You  can  never  be  merged  into  the 
greater  sweep  of  being  whence  inspiration 
flows. 

Do  you  tell  me  that  competition  and  strug- 
gle are  necessary  to  make  you  produce  your 
best?  If  that  is  the  mainspring  of  your  art, 
is  your  art  all  it  might  be?  Are  you  not 
merely  an  artisan?  If  you  were  an  artist,  you 
would  sit  down  in  supreme  contentment  and 
rags,  painting  for  the  joy  of  it  alone.  If  you 
could  afford  never  to  sell  a  picture  your  work 
would  be  ten  times  as  good  as  it  is,  and  it 
would  grow  better  every  year.  The  brooding 
soul  ripens;  the  anxious  mind  withers  and 
blights.  It  is  not  good  for  you  to  live  richly 
in  cities,  because  it  is  hard  to  deny  yourself. 
You  must  first  be  poor  and  lonely  and  de- 
jected; then  you  must  think  of  the  luxury  of 
your  freedom;    so  you  will  enter  into  posses- 

180 


Etje  HUtntrs  of  i3rtu0  JJoor 

sion  of  yourself;  and  you  will  be  glad  and 
free  and  creative  and  strong.  There  is  no 
other  gladness;  there  is  no  other  freedom; 
there  is  no  other  greatness. 


181 


** 


>oittar£  ti)t  Cfjrusi)" 


"SoUtart)  tye  Gfytwfy" 


From  where  I  happen  to  be  sitting  this 
afternoon  there  is  nothing  in  the  world  but 
trees  and  birds.  One  measure  of  a  man  is  his 
capacity  for  enduring  solitude.  I  should  be 
sorry  to  predict  anything  of  a  character  from 
this  knowledge  alone;  though  there  are  fa- 
miliar quotations  on  the  subject.  Certainly 
a  little  solitude  now  and  again  is  good  for  most 
of  us.  It  lets  our  busy,  every-day,  toiling, 
anxious  self  have  a  respite;  and  it  gives  our 
deeper,  more  serene  self  a  chance  to  be  heard. 
In  solitary  moments  the  stress  of  life  is  light- 
ened or  removed  altogether,  and  we  possess 
our  souls  (after  a  little  practice)  in  enduring 
calm.  Indeed,  I  fancy  the  expert  in  solitude 
brings  home  from  his  radiant  contemplation 

185 


£fje  ftinsljfji  of  Nature 

a  fund  of  joyful  patience  to  serve  him  in 
stormy  hours.  The  wildest  confusion  of  cir- 
cumstance, the  direst  calamity,  are  powerless 
to  undo  him  quite.  Even  under  sorrow  and 
irreparable  grief  he  retains  something  of  the 
great  primal  tolerance  and  unshaken  solidity 
of  nature. 

For  it  is  when  we  are  most  alone  and  with- 
drawn into  our  profounder  selves  that  we  are 
most  completely  in  accord  with  the  spirit  of 
the  universe,  by  whatever  name  it  may  be 
called.  So  that  he  who  takes  time  to  be  alone 
occasionally  is  in  reality  preparing  himself 
for  meeting  his  fellows  with  greater  sympathy 
and  understanding.  When  we  allow  ourselves 
to  be  engrossed  unceasingly  in  the  smaller 
outward,  trivial  details  of  existence,  and  in 
superficial  human  intercourse,  we  lose  our 
power  of  approaching  our  friends  through 
the  profounder  channels  of  sympathy  and 
appreciation.  We  become  so  thoroughly  ha- 
bituated to  living  on  the  surface  that  we  seem 
to  have  no  core  of  being  left  in  us.     This  is 

186 


"  Solitary  tfjt  Entrust)" 

the  real  cause  of  the  vapidity  of  society. 
Human  intercourse,  very  likely,  is  the  crown- 
ing end  and  aim  of  nature.  But  that  implies 
human  nature  at  its  best,  and  we  cannot  too 
constantly  be  giving  ourselves  away  without 
replenishing  our  individuality  from  that 
deeper  intercourse  which  solitude  affords. 

But  the  great  beautiful  wildernesses  of  the 
earth  are  not  the  only  regions  where  solitude 
may  be  sought.  The  world  of  art  and  the 
world  of  religion  will  serve  equally  well  for 
our  retirement. 

For  the  past  hour  a  brown  thrush  has  been 
fluting  in  the  thicket  here,  inducing  the  most 
thoughtless  to  meditation.  Why  is  it  that  his 
song  seems  so  entrancing  to  us?  Is  it  not  be- 
cause on  hearing  it  we  are  arrested  midway  in 
our  occupation,  and  invited  to  partake  of  the 
silence  while  we  expectantly  await  the  next 
burst  of  the  golden  notes?  It  is  the  same 
hypnotic  power  that  charms  us  in  music;  it 
stills  our  superficial,  unnecessary  self  and  al- 
lows our  wiser,  deeper  self  a  moment  or  an 

187 


Styr  Ixinniyip  of  Xatttr* 

hour  of  freedom.  Music  is  the  most  primitive 
and  widely  beloved  of  the  arts;  and  it  is  one 
of  the  most  powerful  for  this  reason. 

"  I  can  always  leave  off  talking,  when  I 
hear  a  master  play." 

Again,  when  a  great  drama  is  on  the  boards, 
there  is  all  the  direct  appeal  of  its  beautiful 
story  and  setting,  the  enlisting  of  our  atten- 
tion, the  ennobling  and  intensifying  of  our 
sentiment;  but  at  the  same  time  there  is  the 
no  less  potent,  though  unnoted,  spell  of  si- 
lence it  is  casting  over  us.  We  grow  still  to 
listen,  and  as  we  are  absorbed  in  the  spectacle, 
spirit  finds  its  opportunity  for  unstifled 
growth.  This  may  even  be  the  great  function 
of  sleep;  we  do  not  know.  Certainly  we  can 
rest  perfectly  well  without  sleep.  Perhaps 
sleep  comes  from  the  soul's  imperative  de- 
mand for  solitude,  its  need  for  intercourse 
with  some  spiritual  profundity  from  which  it 
springs. 

In  all  our  more  obvious  existence,  our  physi- 
cal and  mental  existence,  too  much  solitude 

t88 


44 


Solitary  tfje  Eijrttsf)" 


is  a  dangerous  menace.  It  is  only  in  com- 
munity of  life  that  sanity  and  health  are 
maintained.  For,  superior  and  noble  as  the 
spiritual  part  of  man  is,  it  is  too  simple,  too 
unworldly,  to  be  entrusted  with  the  control  of 
affairs  here  and  now,  perhaps.  So  that  while 
solitude  is  supremely  important,  it  is  not  ex- 
clusively so.  But  that  is  a  caution  few  of  us 
need.  For  the  most  part,  we  are  too  absorbed 
with  the  loaves  and  fishes  to  be  at  all  curious 
about  the  miracle. 

Let  me,  then,  learn  to  cultivate  a  taste  for 
solitude.  And  for  this,  one  need  not  be 
morose  nor  anti-social;  for  as  solitude  is  not 
a  physical  need,  so  it  may  be  had  even  in  com- 
pany. But  repose  of  mind,  if  it  is  not  quite 
solitary,  is  at  least  a  tendency  toward  solitude. 
It  is  only  in  reticence  that  speech  gathers 
force;  it  is  only  from  rest  that  activity  can 
arise.  So  it  is  only  by  being  sometimes  alone 
that  we  can  ever  be  fit  for  friendship,  com- 
panionship, or  love. 

So  the  thrush  may  chant  for  you  from  his 

189 


Sfljt  &inui)ip  of  Nature 

green  sanctuary  for  half  a  day  and  send  you 
back  strangely  elated  and  encouraged  for  new 
endeavour.  These  vague  suggestions  which  I 
have  set  down  as  he  sang  may  be  quite  value- 
less, and  you,  when  you  hear  him,  may  have 
entirely  different  thoughts.  It  does  not  mat- 
ter at  all.  We  shall  both  have  profited  as  we 
could  by  the  engrossing  music  of  the  forest. 
And  these  crude  ephemeral  words  will  no 
more  be  lost  than  are  his  liquid  notes  in  the 
deep  ravine.  They  have  served  to  embody 
for  me  my  own  hour  of  tranquillity.  You, 
when  you  come  to  the  woods,  will  find  your 
own  suitable  words  more  appropriate  and 
fresh  than  these.  For,  though  this  afternoon 
and  its  sylvan  melody  have  perished  in  the 
shadows  of  the  mountains,  you,  when  you 
arrive,  shall  find  others  as  fair  and  significant 
awaiting  you. 


190 


Crees 


Crete 


FLOWERS  are  so  small,  so  easily  cultivated, 
so  personal,  so  brilliant,  that  they  have  gained 
almost  more  than  their  share  of  human  atten- 
tion. While  their  elder  sisters,  the  trees,  keep 
their  unobtrusive  estate,  and  minister  untir- 
ingly to  our  comfort  with  little  praise  or  rec- 
ognition. Yet,  how  necessary  they  are!  I  do 
not  mean  how  useful,  I  mean  spiritually  need- 
ful. 

Apart  from  their  humble  office  as  givers  of 
shade  and  preservers  of  streams,  they  minister 
more  than  we  guess  to  our  hourly  pleasure. 
Yet  we  are  so  thoughtless  of  them  that  we 
take  their  benefits  without  a  word  of  gratitude 
for  the  most  part.  If  you  have  seen  a  wooded 
hillside   in  winter  you  will    remember  how 

*93 


2T1JC  2uus!jij)  of  Nature 

lonely  and  bleak  it  looked.  Only  the  bare 
skeletons  of  the  trees  spread  over  the  moun- 
tain, and  all  the  great  primitive  strength  and 
ruggedness  and  sorry  age  of  the  earth  ex- 
posed to  sight,  —  the  ribs  of  the  world.  These 
are  the  same  hills,  perhaps,  that  you  knew  in 
summer,  so  green  and  so  luxuriant,  bare  now 
and  stern,  showing  all  their  scars,  bitter  evi- 
dences of  their  strenuous,  enduring  history. 
The  calm,  unimpassioned  whiteness  of  the 
snow  has  folded  them  in  its  chilly  oblivion.  It 
is  impossible  to  believe  that  spring  can  repeat 
her  ancient  miracle;  surely,  here  is  the  veriest 
desolation,  the  mere  geology  of  life,  inorganic 
dust,  the  inert  mass  of  the  firmament  given 
over  to  the  stealthy  depredation  of  elemental 
time;    no  hope  nor  assurance  anywhere. 

And  yet,  in  contradiction  of  all  the  proba- 
bilities of  sense,  that  desolation  will  grow 
vivid  and  lovely  as  the  sun  comes  north.  All 
those  gaunt  spectres  that  now  seem  so  ghostly 
will  put  on  their  gala  attire,  the  April  orange 
and  May-time  green.  That  soft,  purplish  mist 

194 


of  the  far  spring  woods  means  in  reality  the 
reds  and  yellows  of  the  maple  blossoms,  and 
the  paler  yellows  and  silver  of  the  willow  cat- 
kins. It  is  the  first  flush  of  reviving  life  that 
comes  before  the  green  of  leaf.  And  carefully 
as  you  may  watch,  the  green  banners  will  seem 
to  be  flung  abroad  suddenly  at  last.  If  you 
single  out  one  tree  for  your  care,  and  observe 
it  every  day,  you  may  think  to  trace  the 
gradual  assumption  of  its  full  robes  for  June. 
You  will  be  disappointed.  There  will  come  a 
day  of  rain  or  a  night  of  warmth,  and  when 
you  next  see  your  friend  you  will  stand  aston- 
ished at  the  change.  You  have  been  surprised 
again  by  nature.  The  ancient  sorceress  had 
no  mind  to  be  spied  upon;  and  must  guard 
well  the  secret  of  her  power  over  your  won- 
dering admiration.  There  you  are,  outwitted, 
after  all;  for  the  tree  unfolded  every  leaf 
while  you  slept.  So  the  grass  springs,  and 
the  dandelions  are  born,  —  by  magic,  in  a 
twinkling,  myriads  at  once,  —  so  that  yester- 
day they  were  unheard  of,  and  to-day  they 

195 


2TJje  mmfyip  of  TSTatttre 

possess  the  earth  in  their  gay  panoply  and 
simple  golden  pomp. 

The  trees  are  the  great  mitigators  and  tem- 
perers  of  the  elements  to  man.  They  shelter 
us  from  the  fury  of  the  rain  and  snow,  yet 
conserve  it  for  our  gradual  use.  They  shade 
us  from  the  glare  of  the  open  sun,  yet  in  time 
furnish  us  with  heat  and  light.  A  treeless 
country  is  not  the  best  of  countries.  Its  useful- 
ness is  limited  and  specialized.  A  normal 
earth  for  man  has  both  forest  and  prairie.  But 
these  are  only  the  gross  material  blessings  of 
the  trees.    There  remains  all  their  beauty. 

How  few  of  us  ever  heed  those  goodly,  pa- 
tient friends  of  man.  We  go  forth  and  rifle 
the  wilderness  of  its  laurel  or  its  arbutus,  but 
not  one  in  ten  among  us  knows  a  beech  from 
a  maple,  nor  a  pine  from  a  spruce.  It  is  a 
part  of  our  dense  indifference  to  everything 
save  personal  luxury.  But  a  nation  which 
does  not  know  one  tree  from  another  is  in 
peril    of    vanishing    from  the    earth.     Puny 


196 


Erees 

dwellers  in  cities,  let  us  get  down  to  earth 
more  often  than  we  do. 

I  suppose  one's  love  of  trees  changes  like 
one's  love  of  everything  else.  At  one  time  of 
life  we  adore  the  oak;  at  another  the  elm 
commands  our  allegiance.  It  is  a  matter  of 
circumstance  and  environment,  since  each  tree 
differs  from  its  fellow  and  each  is  lovely  after 
its  kind.  To  name  the  elm  is  to  have  a  vision 
of  great  meadows,  and  summer  barns,  and 
fields  of  hay,  and  sweeps  of  blue  river.  The 
elm  is  a  lover  of  such  scenes,  and  if  we  have 
lived  through  them  in  youth,  its  swaying, 
feathery  top  will  always  recall  the  memories 
of  that  perished  time,  —  remembrances  of  a 
native  country,  of  intervale  lands,  with  some 
great  river  winding  slowly  down  between  the 
hills,  blue  under  the  summer  sky.  There  are 
its  broad,  deep-soiled  islands,  shoulder  high 
with  hay,  where  the  few  gray,  wide-chinked 
barns  stand  awaiting  their  harvest.  Along  the 
edges  of  the  islands  are  a  few  chokecherries 
and  water  maples,  but  no  great  trees  save  the 

197 


2T5e  &tusf)tp  of  Katttre 

stately  elms  here  and  there,  solitary  under  the 
blue. 

Or,  again,  it  may  be  the  marvellous  maple 
of  the  north  that  would  enlist  all  your  friend- 
ship. Its  brave  scarlet  and  golden  coat  makes 
the  autumn  world  a  mediaeval  crusade  for  bril- 
liancy and  courage.  It  is  surely  impossible 
to  be  craven  or  hopeless  in  the  face  of  such 
gorgeous  beauty!  October  in  the  moun- 
tains, when  the  maples  are  in  all  their  splen- 
dour, is  no  time  for  the  trifling  or  the  mean. 
To  see  those  beautiful  trees  arrayed  for  the 
closing  days  of  the  year  is  to  partake  of  the 
nobleness  of  nature.  While  we  know  it  not, 
something  of  that  wondrous  Oriental  richness 
of  colour  enters  into  our  subtler  make-up,  and 
we  arise  on  the  morrow  with  unguessed  ac- 
quisitions of  soul. 

Again,  there  are  the  pines.  And  how  differ- 
ent the  pine  regions  of  the  south  from  those 
of  the  north.  There  is  one  thing,  however, 
that  marks  a  pine-tree,  one  quality  in  which 
none  of  the  other  children  of  the  forest  can 

198 


Qttttn 

rival  it — its  delicacy  of  line  against  the  sky. 
No  other  tree  throws  on  the  pale  blue  curtain 
so  graceful  a  tracery  of  tiny  pencillings.  Look 
at  the  branch  of  a  pine-tree  in  the  twilight 
seen  clear  against  the  open  heaven.  And  so, 
indeed,  you  may  run  through  your  list  of 
acquaintance  among  the  trees.  Note  the  shaft 
of  the  spruce,  the  trembling  leaf  of  the  aspen 
set  on  differently  from  all  other  leaves,  and 
the  sound  of  the  palms  like  the  patter  of  rain, 
and  the  colour  of  the  beech  boles.  A  master 
could  write  a  volume  on  any  one  of  these 
traits.  On  some  mountainside,  where  the 
wildest  thrushes  prefer  to  dwell,  and  where 
beech-trees  come  to  their  perfection,  note,  the 
next  time  you  pass,  the  beautiful  gray  and  blue 
and  purple  of  those  smooth-barked  boles. 
The  trunk  of  a  full-grown  beech  is  subject 
enough  for  any  painter.  Like  Monet's  hay- 
stack, it  might  be  painted  in  a  hundred  lights, 
and  still  stand  there  unexhausted  in  sugges- 
tion and  beauty. 

When  Arnold  was  in  America  our  tulip- 

199 


arfte  lUustjfj)  of  Nature 

trees  took  his  fancy,  and  he  wished  to  be  re- 
membered when  they  come  in  flower.  So 
every  season  has  its  distinctive  tree;  the  dark- 
painted  fir  full  of  snow  in  midwinter,  and 
the  greenish-white  flowered  chestnuts  show- 
ing pale  in  the  forests  of  July.  But  at  all 
times  of  the  round  year  the  trees  of  the  wild 
forest  are  there,  only  waiting  to  be  known  and 
loved. 


.00 


Ci)e  Ritual  of  JEature 


€f)e  Kitual  of  Mature 


ALWAYS  and  everywhere  the  law  of  strict 
congruity  obtaining  in  nature,  is  not  less  won- 
derful than  the  law  of  universal  variation. 
Before  my  window  a  cherry-tree  is  waving  in 
the  sunlight;  it  bears  some  thousands  of 
leaves,  no  two  of  which  are  precisely  alike; 
yet  it  is  itself  only  one  of  hundreds  of  other 
cherry-trees  within  eyeshot,  while  they  again 
are  a  mere  handful  of  all  the  cherry-trees  in 
the  State.  And  still  of  these  myriads  of  leaves, 
you  could  not  place  one  down  upon  another 
and  find  them  to  match  precisely.  There 
would  be  some  slight  difference  of  outline,  a 
dent  here,  a  point  there,  —  the  individual 
idiosyncrasy  of  the  leaf.    Yet  all  these  cherry 

203 


W§t  fitusijij)  of  Mature 

leaves  conform  to  the  type  and  character 
which  they  have  gradually  developed  for 
themselves.  They  are  great  sticklers  for  tradi- 
tion, these  leaves;  they  allow  complete  per- 
sonal liberty,  within  certain  limits.  If  you 
are  a  cherry  leaf  you  may  be  as  odd  and  queer 
as  you  please,  so  long  as  you  remain  a  cherry 
leaf.  It  is  ordered,  however,  that  you  must  so 
far  conform  to  the  character  of  your  race  as 
to  be  distinguishable  from  the  elms  and  the 
alders.  Latitude  is  allowed,  but  degrees  of 
latitude  are  found  necessary. 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  Nature  is  strictly 
a  formalist  in  dealing  with  her  tribes,  that 
she  permits  them  just  so  much  liberty  of  ac- 
tion and  freedom  of  thought  as  shall  conserve 
the  interest  of  the  individual,  and  not  enough 
to  imperil  the  integrity  of  the  sect.  "  Dwell 
in  harmony,"  she  seems  to  say,  "  all  you  mul- 
titudes of  differing  schools.  Be  yourselves, 
each  as  distinct  as  you  please;  every  indi- 
vidual by  himself  distinguished  from  his 
brother,  yet  not  alien.     Let  there  be  no  in- 

204 


£ije  lUtual  of  Nature 

fringing  on  the  borders  of  your  fellow  tribes." 
So  that  with  all  her  tolerance  the  Great 
Mother  still  limits  personal  whim,  still  for- 
bids fancy  to  overstep  the  bounds  of  reason- 
able divergence,  still  humours  ambition  but 
discourages  arrogance,  and  still  mitigates  the 
pride  of  life  in  her  children  by  imposing  a 
frontier  beyond  which  they  shall  not  pass. 
Surely  from  her  immemorial  custom  the  open- 
minded  observer  will  learn  the  double  precept 
of  perfect  liberty  in  perfect  obedience,  and  her 
service,  too,  is  perfect  freedom.  The  lesser 
gospel  of  the  leaves,  like  the  greater  gospel 
of  the  sages,  is  the  utmost  range  of  will  within 
the  utmost  bounds  of  law.  Each  after  his  kind 
shall  thrive  and  prosper  as  it  was  in  the 
beginning,  and  none  shall  transcend  his  appor- 
tioned sphere.  So  that  in  the  stupendous 
hierarchy  whose  visible  temple  is  the  dome 
of  blue,  whose  worshippers  are  the  congre- 
gations of  the  all-growing  creatures,  there  is 
promulgated  the  dogma  of  limitations. 
In  proof  of  this,  behold  the  rituals  of  the 

205 


Zfyt  Itiugfjip  of  Nature 

forest!  The  aspiration  of  the  maples  taking 
shape,  after  the  traditions  of  their  ancestors 
for  a  thousand  generations,  in  one  form, 
the  aspiration  of  the  pines  in  another.  To 
the  tanager  one  peculiar  intonation,  and  to  the 
song-sparrow  another.  The  litany  of  the 
white-throat  and  the  psalm  of  the  thrush. 
Whatever  may  be  in  the  dark  mind  of  the 
owl,  he  is  given  but  few  words  to  express  it; 
the  plaintive  iterations  of  the  whippoorwill 
must  serve  him  in  lieu  of  a  more  voluminous 
chant;  and  who  shall  say  that  brilliant  utter- 
ance of  the  bobolink  is  sufficient  for  him?  Yet 
it  is  all  he  has.  And  none  shall  transcend  his 
allotted  ritual,  nor  praise  the  Power  in  forms 
unprescribed. 

To  be  a  bystander,  therefore,  an  individual- 
ist, a  radical,  a  nonconformist,  is  the  one  atro- 
cious crime  in  nature.  All  this  seeming 
rigour  of  differentiation  is  only  the  first 
glimpse  of  a  world  which  is  one,  whole,  single, 
indivisible.  At  first  sight  it  appears  that  our 
brother  the   cherry   is   alien   in    race   to  our 

106 


Etje  ftftttal  of  Nature 

cousin  the  peach ;  so  they  may  be  by  our  faulty 
terms  of  distinction.  But  the  scientists  affirm 
that  all  classification  is  but  more  or  less  con- 
venient; that  it  is  never  absolute,  nor  accu- 
rate beyond  a  certain  point;  that  character- 
istics melt  and  merge  into  one  another,  so  that 
often  it  is  impossible  to  tell  this  species  from 
that;  and  various  forms  of  life  are  blended 
like  the  colours  of  the  spectrum. 

How  came  the  woodthrush  to  outstrip  the 
robin  in  song?  And  why  is  the  fox  still  the 
wolf's  better  in  intelligence?  By  attempting, 
by  aspiration,  by  daring  the  unknown  and 
achieving  the  untried. 

While,  therefore,  there  are  two  observances 
in  the  ritual  of  Nature,  the  duty  of  obedience, 
and  the  duty  of  adventure,  the  latter  is  the 
greater  of  the  two.  The  seed  which  is  placed 
in  dry  bin  is  secure,  and  will  last  a  hundred 
years  intact;  its  fellow  which  is  thrust  into 
the  moist  earth  takes  a  thousand  chances  of 
death  for  the  one  chance  of  glorious  energy, 
growth,  and  perfection.     Following  the  law 

207 


£Jjr  XiiusijiiJ  of  Natttr* 

of  obedience  it  would  live  to  see  its  offspring 
spread  through  the  forest,  cover  the  earth  with 
shade,  and  fulfil  the  offices  of  the  ritual  ap- 
pointed for  its  kind. 

Yet  every  leaf,  every  bud  that  sprang  from 
that  courageous  fecundity  would  only  con- 
form to  the  pattern  of  his  tribe  so  much  and 
no  more.     There  would  remain  to  each  his 

own  character,  his  individuality,  his  own 
mode  of  worship,  if  one  may  say  so.  And  it  is 
just  this  increment  of  variation,  for  ever  at 
play  in  the  forces  of  the  universe,  that  makes 
for  progress,  interest,  truth.  So  that  while  we 
admire  the  sober  catholicity  of  Nature,  and 
keep  in  mind  her  singleness  of  brotherhood, 
we  are  to  reverence  her  boundless  liberality 
still  more. 

I  have  no  doubt  our  friend  the  cherry-tree 
is  well  content  to  be  himself,  "  imperial,  plain, 
and  true;'  also,  I  have  no  doubt  that  deep 
in  his  sappy  heart  there  lurks  the  patient 
power  which  in  time  will  make  him  enlarge 


208 


£J)e  Mitttai  of  Nature 

his  ritual,  ennobling  his  worship,  and  spread- 
ing wider  the  gospel  according  to  St.  Cherry. 
For  the  abiding  unrebellious  spirit  is  good, 
but  the  divine  unrest  is  good,  too. 


209 


Concerning  ^rtfte 


Courcmittu  ilrite 


PRIDE  has  long  been  enrolled  among  the 
vices  which  we  should  abhor,  —  has  been  exe- 
crated by  the  church,  and  condemned  by  popu- 
lar consent  as  a  spiritual  attribute  to  be  eradi- 
cated; and  there  is  a  sort  of  pride,  or  a  de- 
gree of  pride,  which  is  altogether  personal, 
petty,  and  unworthy,  and  which  is  only  saved 
from  being  most  offensive  by  being  ridicu- 
lous. 

Pride,  however,  is  essentially  and  funda- 
mentally one  of  the  virtues,  not  one  of  the 
vices.  Pride,  if  you  analyze  it,  seems  to  be 
one  of  the  component  parts  of  love.  For  in 
love  there  is  an  unreasoned,  incomprehensible 
attraction  for  another,  which  draws  us  often 
in  spite  of  our  better  judgment,  in  spite  of 

213 


3Tfir  lihtsJjtj)  of  Nature 

our  finer  instinct,  and  which  we  call  the  physi- 
cal element  of  love.  It  is  not  at  all  an  ignoble 
quality,  as  many  have  mistakenly  fancied.  It 
is  not  a  quality  of  which  to  be  ashamed,  or  of 
which  we  should  try  to  rid  ourselves.  It  is 
probably  governed  by  reasons  more  complex 
and  subtle  than  we  comprehend.  And  power- 
ful as  it  is,  its  mandates  must  be  given  their 
due  weight. 

Physical  attraction,  or  the  primitive  blind 
forceful  bidding  of  cosmic  nature,  is  only  a 
third  of  love,  however.  There  are  two  other 
constituents,  equally  important.  The  second 
constituent  is  spiritual,  and  partakes  of  the 
nature  of  worship  or  reverence,  and  leads  to 
those  beautiful  enduring  acts  of  devotion 
which  we  so  commonly  associate  with  the  idea 
of  love.  But  the  third  constituent  of  the  pas- 
sion of  love  is  pride.  Love  manifests  itself 
in  our  bodies  as  instinctive  craving,  in  our 
souls  as  devotion,  and  in  our  minds  as  pride. 

No  love  is  complete  without  pride.  It  is 
not  enough  that  I  feel  an  irresistible  liking  for 

214 


Concerning  JJritre 

my  friend,  and  that  I  rejoice  in  an  unswerving 
devotion  toward  him.  I  must  be  able  to  retain 
my  pride  in  him  as  well.  My  judgment  must 
be  able  to  consider  him  in  all  his  dealings  and 
find  him  good.  When  I  can  no  longer  take 
pride  in  my  friend,  there  is  only  the  ghost 
of  love  left.  When  he  does  that  of  which  I 
must  disapprove,  perfect  friendship  is  imper- 
illed. I  may  continue  to  be  devoted  as  be- 
fore, but  the  fair  relation  of  our  lives  is 
impaired.  I  can  no  longer  give  him  that 
unqualified  enthusiasm,  that  delightful  zest 
of  the  spirit,  which  betokens  a  great  friend- 
ship. When  I  think  of  him  my  thought  is 
infected  with  sadness.  I  no  longer  love  him 
with  my  whole  being;  my  pride  in  him,  for 
the  time  being  at  least,  has  suffered  injury. 

Just  so  in  the  relations  of  men  and  women, 
pride  is  the  savour  of  love.  Adam  is  enam- 
oured of  Eve,  first  by  propinquity,  second  by 
admiration,  lastly  by  unselfish  devotion.  But 
the  admiration,  the  pride  in  Eve's  traits  and 
accomplishments,   is   at  first  probably  much 

215 


W§t  Ittnstjip  of  Mature 

more  than  one-third  of  Adam's  feeling  toward 
her.  And  all  through  their  courtship  Eve 
has  enough  intuitive  wisdom  to  foster  this 
pride  of  Adam's  toward  herself;  and  Adam, 
taught  by  the  same  wise  nature,  knows  without 
thinking  that  he  must  be  his  best  before  Eve. 
Then  follows  the  ceremony,  the  sad  enthrall- 
ment,  which  appears  to  be  necessary  still,  and 
which  is  so  often  fatal  to  love.  But  why  fatal? 
Why  should  marriage  be  so  indubitably  a 
means  of  the  destruction  of  love?  Why  is  it 
so  rarely  the  ideal  relation  which  we  persist 
in  pretending  it  is? 

Is  it  not  because  of  disillusion?  And  does 
not  the  disillusion  follow  from  carelessness? 

No  sooner  has  Eve  become  Mrs.  Adam 
than  she  takes  Adam's  love  for  granted.  She 
begins  to  rely  on  her  marriage  certificate. 
That  terrific  document  is  endowed  with  so 
much  real  and  manifest  power  over  the  will 
and  the  action  of  her  companion  that  she  in- 
evitably comes  to  consider  Adam's  heart  as 
firmly  bound   as  Adam's  person.     Little  by 

216 


Concerning  i>rffie 

little  she  neglects  those  instinctive  admoni- 
tions of  her  nature,  which  would  bid  her  al- 
ways appeal  to  Adam's  pride  in  her.  She  no 
longer  feels  it  necessary  to  please  him,  to 
appear  to  best  advantage  in  his  sight.  He  is 
only  her  husband;  it  doesn't  matter.  She 
"  braces  up  "  "  for  company,"  but  when  "  only 
Adam  '  is  at  home  she  may  go  as  slipshod 
and  negligent  as  she  pleases. 

And  Adam?  Well,  Adam  doesn't  shave 
every  day  now.  There  will  be  no  one  at  break- 
fast but  Eve.  When  the  dinner  is  not  good  he 
can  grumble  a  little,  if  there  is  no  one  present 
but  his  wife.  He,  too,  has  forgotten  that  pride 
is  one-third  of  love. 

So  Adam  and  Eve  reveal  to  each  other  their 
petty  faults,  their  insignificant  flaws  of  char- 
acter, which  so  little  care  would  hide;  the 
admiration  of  each  for  the  other  is  gradually 
destroyed;  pride  is  allowed  to  die,  and  with 
the  death  of  pride  love  receives  a  mortal 
wound.  Oh,  Eve,  how  can  you  be  so  foolish? 
How  can  you  imagine  that  any  silly  writing 

217 


£J)C  ftt  itsijtj)  of  Nature 

upon  paper  will  bind  an  immortal  being  to 
you,  when  you  allow  that  being's  pride  in  you 
to  be  outraged  every  day?  And  oh,  Adam, 
what  a  fool  you  must  be  to  allow  Eve  to  suf- 
fer one  moment's  disillusion  in  regard  to  you! 
If  you  cannot  retain  the  love  of  Eve,  it  is  your 
fault,  very  often,  and  not  hers;  and  you  de- 
serve to  lose  her.  And  if  she  cannot  command 
your  continual  regard,  ten  to  one  it  is  her 
own  fault  and  not  yours. 

Of  all  the  causes  which  make  for  the  over- 
throw of  love  and  the  destruction  of  happi- 
ness between  men  and  women,  (so  sad  and, 
alas,  so  common!),  surely  none  is  surer  nor 
more  frequent  than  this  loss  of  pride.  Yet 
some  men  are  so  fatuous  that  they  will  not 
allow  others  to  retain  any  illusion  in  regard 
to  themselves.  They  insist  on  revealing  all 
their  weaknesses,  with  a  fond  notion  that  an 
engaging  frankness  is  better  than  deception. 
Not  so.  No  man  has  the  power  of  reaching 
his  own  ideal,  unless  he  inculcates  that  ideal 
of  himself  in  the  minds  of  others. 

218 


Concerning  Otitic 

But  noble,  generous,  wise,  and  modest  pride 
is  not  a  virtue  much  in  vogue  in  our  day.  Are 
we  not  apt  to  think  that  democracy  consists  in 
making  ourselves  no  better  than  our  neigh- 
bours? Whereas  true  democracy  implies  only 
the  free  and  fair  chance  to  each  man  to  be  his 
best.  The  capacity  for  being  one's  best  re- 
mains unchanged ;  and  the  duty  of  being  one's 
best  stands  as  obligatory  as  ever.  I  believe  in 
freedom  for  all  (the  wise  man  might  say), 
because  I  believe  in  it  for  myself,  in  order  that 
I  may  realize  my  better  and  greater  self.  And 
to  do  this  one  must  have  pride,  —  pride  that 
keeps  one  erect  and  unflinching  to  the  last,  — 
pride  that  insists  on  scrupulous  manners, 
admirable  breeding,  deep  culture,  and  impec- 
cable self-control,  —  pride  that  preserves  for 
ever  the  beautiful  and  radiant  illusions  of  the 
soul.  For  without  pride  in  ourselves,  in  our 
work,  and  in  each  other,  life  becomes  sordid 
and  vulgar  and  slovenly;  the  work  of  our 
hands  unlovely;  and  we  ourselves  hopeless 
and  debased. 

219 


<Bf  33reetit!tg 


<&f  Swetrmg 


If  pride  is  the  essence  of  respect  for  one's 
self,  breeding  is,  we  may  almost  say,  the  habit 
of  respect  for  others.  It  is  pride  made  gener- 
ous, pride  thoroughly  purged  of  selfishness. 
The  constant  habit  of  regard  for  our  neigh- 
bour and  our  friend  is  surely  one  of  the  prime 
requisites  of  a  comfortable  life  among  mortals. 
The  exaltation  of  the  ego  is  an  essence  of  prog- 
ress and  the  aim  of  perfection;  but  the  recog- 
nition of  many  an  alter  ego  about  us  is  equally 
imperative.  The  failure  to  perceive  their  ex- 
istence, appreciate  their  differences,  and  make 
allowance  for  their  varying  needs,  must  result 
in  disaster  to  ourselves. 

First  of  all  things  I  know  my  own  likes  and 
dislikes,   desires,  wants,   failings,   aspirations, 

223 


STfje  luustju)  of  ISTatttte 

pleasures,  joys,  sorrows,  and  fears;  and  I 
instinctively  proceed  to  live  my  life  about  these 
fundamental  facts.  If  I  have  a  measure  of 
wisdom  I  try  so  to  balance  these  natural  forces 
as  to  produce  in  my  character  some  faint 
similitude  of  that  ideal  of  personality  which 
his  imagination  reveals  to  every  man,  —  striv- 
ing in  the  course  of  years  to  approach  ever 
nearer  and  nearer  the  true  self  which  I  feel 
I  am  capable  of  becoming.  Always  to  keep 
this  beautiful  image  in  sight,  always  to  be  hop- 
ing for  its  realization  in  ourselves,  never  to 
despair  of  one  day  accomplishing  even  in  this 
life  our  longed-for  wish,  —  this  is  the  gist  of 
culture.  And  it  is  pride,  —  honest,  wise,  un- 
selfish, tolerant  pride,  —  that  must  be  our 
mainstay  in  that  splendid  impossible  struggle, 
that  strife  for  perfection  which  we  must  for 
ever  wage,  and  which  brings  its  rich  results 
hour  by  hour,  though  we  seem  to  fail  at  last. 
There  is  no  more  imperative  or  more  be- 
coming duty  than  self-culture,  —  bodily,  men- 
tal, spiritual.    For  surely,  in  so  delightful  and 

224 


wonderful  a  world,  we  cannot  be  too  eager 
or  too  persistent  to  make  ourselves  in  every 
degree  worthy  of  life.  Our  instinct  every  day 
cries  out  for  larger  endeavour  and  more  glori- 
ous achievement  than  we  have  yet  known. 
Each  morning  we  look  upon  creation  and  are 
dumbly  aware  of  the  call  of  opportunity,  and 
the  spirit  within  us  resolves  to  do.  Not  a 
mortal  in  the  universe  but  has  said  to  himself, 
"  I  will."  And  in  the  evening  we  are  aware 
of  determinations  unfulfilled.  Perhaps  these 
failures  in  accomplishment  are  all  there  is 
of  imperfection  upon  earth.  Perhaps  all  we 
need  to  do,  in  order  to  touch  immortal  happi- 
ness and  partake  of  immortal  life,  is  to  attain 
our  own  ideal  once,  and  once  for  all.  A  possi- 
bility almost  beyond  the  likelihood  of  human 
grasp!  And  yet  it  is  not  in  man's  nature  to 
despair,  save  at  times;  for  the  most  part  we 
are  buoyant  with  the  elation  of  expectancy, 
and  taste  the  relish  of  confidence.  In  all  the 
drift  of  existence,  the  trend  which  energy  fol- 


225 


art)*  Zunsijij)  of  Mature 

lows  from  nothingness  to  beauty,  pride  is  the 
indwelling  active  spirit,  the  regulating  power. 
But  pride  is  not  enough,  culture  of  self  is 
not  enough,  joy  in  self-growth  is  not  enough. 
Indeed,  in  itself  alone,  and  of  itself  alone,  self- 
culture  cannot  subsist.  We  cannot  for  an 
instant  maintain  our  being  without  depend- 
ence on  circumstance  and  surrounding.  From 
within  we  know  the  impulse  of  self-assertion 
—  in  the  largest,  best  sense;  but  from  percep- 
tion we  see  that  the  world  is  an  agglomeration 
of  other  beings  like  ourselves,  no  one  of  which 
is  more  important  than  another.  And  the  con- 
clusion comes  in  on  us  that  we  too  are  each 
of  us  no  more  than  an  atom,  and  that  as  our 
relations  with  others  are  inevitable,  so  they 
should  be  considerate.  While  natural  ego- 
tism makes  us  insistent,  our  first  intelligent 
glance  at  the  world  should  make  us  plastic. 
Yet  so  stubborn  is  spirit,  so  tenacious  of  life 
at  all  hazards,  that  it  does  not  easily  concede  to 
others  those  rights  it  demands  for  itself.  The 
habit  of  doing  this  is  the  aim  of  breeding. 

226 


m  i&reciring 

The  disinterested  mind  perceives  that  for  the 
perfection  of  selfhood  unselfishness  is  neces- 
sary. That  which  I  forego  in  consideration 
for  others  shall  return  to  me  again  in  conscious 
rectitude  and  self-respect. 

As  pride  is  a  part  of  love,  the  instinctive 
foresight  of  the  loving  spirit,  and  exhibits 
itself  in  nobleness  and  worthiness,  so  breeding 
is  the  habit  of  these  moral  qualities.  For  in 
the  moral  world  breeding  is  not  merely  tradi- 
tion and  inherited  custom;  it  is  the  training 
and  individual  culture  needful  for  perfection 
of  character.  Breeding  makes  habitual  those 
traits  and  actions  which  otherwise  we  would 
only  display  at  rare  moments  of  inspiration. 

Kindness,  gentleness,  civility,  manners,  con- 
tentment, sweetness,  constancy,  devotion,  — 
these  are  some  of  the  results  and  evidences  of 
breeding.  In  breeding  the  character  acquires 
temper,  as  a  piece  of  steel  does  in  the  process 
of  manufacture,  and  is  no  longer  malleable  as 
iron,  but  firmer,  more  trustworthy  and  suscep- 
tible of  polish,  and  far  more  elastic  and  sensi- 

227 


Stye  Hi ngijij)  of  Nature 

tive.  Breeding  prescribes  this  and  that,  limits 
the  whim  of  the  individual,  curtails  choice 
and  enforces  submission,  and  yet  not  excess- 
ively, but  only  for  the  sake  of  the  greater  ulti- 
mate perfection  of  all.  In  our  battle  for  indi- 
vidualism we  must  remember  that  Nature  has 
probably  endowed  all  of  her  children  with  a 
superabundance  of  egotism.  Just  as  she  cre- 
ates myriads  of  seeds  on  thousands  of  trees, 
with  the  chance  of  only  a  very  few  coming  to 
maturity;  so  she  endows  us  with  enormous 
egotism,  that  her  ends  may  be  served,  and  that 
we  may  be  in  no  danger  of  extinction  through 
indifference.  It  by  no  means  follows,  how- 
ever, than  we  can  make  use  of  all  our  egotism, 
or  even  a  large  part  of  it.  We  ought  cheer- 
fully to  recognize  the  fact  that  very  often  the 
individual  will  is  destined  to  disappointment. 
It  is  right  for  you  and  me  to  insist  on  our  own 
way,  as  pride  and  impulse  bid;  yet,  if  we 
could  have  our  utmost  will,  we  should  be  flour- 
ishing to  an  unheard-of  extent,  to  the  cost  and 
detriment  of  all  nature. 

228 


Breeding  teaches  the  necessary  resignation 
of  small  and  selfish  aims,  and  inculcates  an 
unfailing  endeavour  on  behalf  of  society. 
Good  breeding  is  scrupulous  in  requiring  the 
sacrifice  of  our  own  comfort  for  that  of  others. 
It  makes  us  for  ever  tireless  in  obeying  our 
own  good  impulses.  The  vulgar  may  be  kind 
and  generous  and  loving.  But  only  the  well- 
bred  are  tireless  in  observing  the  smallest  and 
nicest  amenities.  For  wisdom  knows  how 
lazy  we  are  and  how  readily  we  fall  into  habits 
of  slovenly  conduct  even  toward  those  whom 
we  love  most  dearly;  it  therefore  creates  the 
code,  and  supplies  the  culture,  to  aid  us  in  our 
difficult  task.  Life  without  breeding  is  food 
without  savour;  it  is  art  without  form.  Only 
the  shallow  mind  will  imagine  that  perfection 
may  be  gained  without  the  generous  helps 
which  breeding  alone  can  supply. 


229 


<&f  ^erenttp 


<&f  Smttttg 


SERENITY  is  a  sort  of  spiritual  capital;  it 
is  that  residuum  of  spiritual  production  which 
remains  over  to  assist  future  production.  If 
we  have  no  serenity  left  after  a  spiritual  ex- 
perience of  any  kind,  we  may  be  sure  that 
our  life,  to  that  extent  at  least,  has  been  in  vain. 

Do  you  read,  do  you  smoke,  do  you  dine,  do 
you  take  a  walk,  do  you  visit  a  picture  show? 
What  is  the  residue  of  impression  left  on  your 
mind  when  the  hour  is  past?  If  it  is  one  of 
pleasurable  content,  an  increment  of  quiet 
happiness,  the  experience  has  been  worth 
while.  Tf  it  is  one  of  uneasy  excitement,  you 
have  gained  nothing.  You  have  toiled  unprof- 
itably.  For  the  spirit,  like  the  body,  must 
see  the  result  of  its  labour;    and  that  result 

*33 


£f)t  Zitnstjf ji  of  Katttre 

is  a  fund  of  abiding  serenity.  How  else  are 
we  to  face  the  future  and  the  unknown  without 
perturbation?  If  our  whole  existence  is  to 
be  made  up  of  excitement,  how  shall  fortitude 
survive?  Those  people  who  think  to  lose 
their  unhappiness  in  a  chain  of  endless  ac- 
tivity, accomplish  only  a  temporary  allevia- 
tion for  themselves.  The  more  engrossed 
they  become  in  mere  activity  for  its  own  sake, 
the  more  futile  will  it  seem  to  them  at  last. 
Rather  than  increasing  their  store  of  serenity 
against  the  foul  weather  of  poverty  or  age  or 
decrepitude,  they  have  been  spending  it  lav- 
ishly in  the  thousand  channels  of  strenuous 
activity. 

As  Emerson  has  it  somewhere,  our  real  life 
is  in  the  silent  moments.  It  may  be  in  the 
pauses  of  conversation,  during  the  midday 
rest  by  a  running  water,  or  after  the  guests  are 
gone  and  the  coals  settle  in  the  grate;  but  the 
inner  life  does  not  receive  its  pleasure  or  its 
nourishment  in  the  doing  of  things;  its  normal 
joy  is  in  accessions  of  serenity;    it  subscribes 

234 


willingly  to  Stevenson's  saying  that  gentle- 
ness and  cheerfulness  are  above  all  morality, 
—  are  the  greatest  virtues. 

Yet  this  is  no  plea  for  idle  shiftlessness.  The 
inert  and  careless,  who  are  incorrigible  by- 
standers at  the  great  pageant  of  life,  seldom 
taste  true  serenity.  They  are  for  ever  infected 
with  a  feverish  dissatisfaction.  The  slow 
malaria  of  inefficiency  is  in  their  bones.  Too 
supine  for  effort  or  accomplishment,  they  miss 
the  zest  of  relaxation,  and  dribble  away  their 
days  in  a  woebegone  dyspeptic  indolence. 
They  have  no  proper  conception  of  the  joys  of 
leisure;  they  are  as  unfortunate  as  those  who 
must  be  for  ever  on  the  go.  It  has  never  oc- 
curred to  them  to  take  hold  of  this  life  sturdily 
in  their  two  hands,  to  work  with  a  will,  to 
play  with  a  will,  to  loaf  with  a  will. 

But  the  wise  man  yields  himself  to  the  mo- 
ment; he  is  glad  of  the  relish  in  toil,  glad  of 
the  serenity  in  rest.  He  does  not  belong  to 
the  leisure  class  nor  yet  to  the  working  class; 
for  in  his  philosonhy  there  should  be  no  lei- 

235 


artje  ftfnsitf;p  of  Nature 

sure  class;  leisure  should  be  common  as  air 
or  water,  for  men  to  take  as  they  need;  and 
work  should  be  as  delightful  as  leisure.  There 
are  thousands  of  men  who  do  not  know  how  to 
rest,  who  have  almost  no  faculty  of  enjoyment; 
but  there  never  yet  was  a  man  who  did  not 
love  work,  —  his  own  proper  work  in  the 
natural  exercise  of  his  powers. 

In  any  case,  to  be  serene  does  not  mean  to  be 
idle.  For  serenity  of  spirit  may  be  kept  in 
the  midst  of  activity;  and  the  most  effective 
workers  are  those  who  are  never  hurried, 
never  flustered,  but  retain  in  the  thickest  tur- 
moil of  daily  life  an  imperturbable  demeanour 
and  steadiness  of  mind.  Your  nervous  indi- 
vidual, whose  fund  of  serenity  is  low,  rushes 
about  in  a  frenzy  of  fussy  excitement,  achiev- 
ing nothing  but  his  own  destruction.  In  that 
most  detestable  of  all  vulgarisms,  he  is  a 
"hustler."  God  help  him!  He  is  distraught 
with  a  mental  rabies;  he  has  been  bitten  by 
the  greed  or  envy  of  commercialism,  or  some 
other  of  the  black  dogs  of  modern  civilization, 

236 


and  his  finish  will  not  be  a  wholesome  thing 
to  see. 

Our  day  has  almost  made  it  seem  true  that 
to  live  without  madness,  one  must  live  without 
haste.  The  man  engaged  in  active  business,  as 
it  is  called,  is  very  much  in  the  position  of  a 
ranchman  in  a  stampede.  If  he  loses  his  head 
through  a  moment's  agitation,  his  doom  is 
written.  He  must  preserve  in  the  irrational 
whirl  around  him  at  least  a  remnant  of 
serenity.  To  be  wholly  engrossed  in  his  sur- 
roundings, to  lose  his  self-command,  is  de- 
struction. 

Serenity  is  the  atmosphere  of  poise,  the  still 
air  in  which  the  nicely  adjusted  balance  of 
all  our  powers  may  be  maintained.  To  pre- 
serve it  we  should  be  willing  to  sacrifice  every- 
thing but  life  itself.  Yet  it  is  not  to  be  had  in 
exchange  for  any  possession  or  characteristic. 
It  is  a  habit,  a  moral  attribute,  a  mode  of 
thinking;  it  is  one  of  the  tides  of  the  mind. 
And  like  so  many  of  the  best  things  in  our 
mortal   existence,    it   is    greatly   a   matter   of 

237 


£ijc  Ikimfyip  of  Xaturc 

temperament.  All  men  are  born  in  bondage 
and  unequal;  and  some  are  blessed  by  the 
fairy  godmother  with  happier  dispositions 
than  others.  Still  there  is  no  despair  for  any 
of  us;  if  we  have  not  the  benign  temper,  the 
temperament  which  makes  for  happiness,  it 
is  our  first  business  to  acquire  it.  Why  go 
through  this  world  perpetually  disgruntled, 
when  men  will  concede  so  much  to  a  smile? 
He  who  is  serene  commands  a  digestive  that 
defies  dyspepsia  and  will  carry  the  buoyancy 
of  youth  into  the  ruts  of  old  age. 

When  you  pass  from  the  realm  of  actual  life 
into  the  realm  of  art,  serenity  becomes  the  no- 
blest of  all  attributes.  In  the  world  of 
beauty,  where  every  line,  every  shade,  every 
tone,  is  adjusted  in  considerations  of  perma- 
nence, how  shall  we  tolerate  anything  that  is 
not  serenely  alive?  An  art  in  which  there  is 
no  serenity  can  no  more  mirror  nature  and 
human  life  for  us,  than  a  ruffled  stream  can 
reflect  the  trees  above  it. 


238 


Pap 


Btyj 


It  is  a  word  long  discredited,  but  never 
forgotten  and  sure  to  return  to  honour  among 
men.  For  play  is  not  an  invention  of  luxu- 
rious idleness,  but  simply  one  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  earth,  a  necessity  of  our  mortal 
state.  Think  of  play  as  meaning  freedom 
from  stress,  freedom  from  restraint.  The  play 
of  a  bolt  or  a  beam  in  construction  is  often 
fatal ;  and  yet  without  play  how  often  a  mech- 
anism would  come  to  wreck!  The  play  of  the 
forest  trees  in  wind  is  their  safeguard;  and 
when  an  ice-storm  falls  on  them  and  locks 
them  down  to  the  rigidity  of  iron,  then  be- 
ware of  the  living  winds  of  heaven  that  come 
boisterously  down  upon  them!  Their  fettered 
limbs  snap,  their  poor  bodies  are  riven  and 

241 


&f)*  XtinsfjUi  of  Xatttte 

split,  their  noble  heads  go  down  to  the  shades 
and  they  are  counted  in  the  refuse  of  the 
world.  With  no  give,  with  no  relaxation,  with 
no  play,  their  usefulness  is  done;  they  must 
perish. 

The  rocks  may  stand  fast  to  our  sight,  but 
we  can  measure  the  enormous  play  of  a  glacier, 
and  the  ordered  play  of  the  spheres  is  our  con- 
stant admiration.  Indeed,  you  will  find  in 
nature  that  everything  has  play,  according  to 
the  need  of  its  being,  and  the  higher  and  more 
complex  the  life,  the  greater  the  amount  of 
play  necessary  to  safety.  As  you  pass  from  the 
solid  and  fixed  frame  of  the  globe  outward 
toward  light  and  warmth,  think  how  play  is 
given  to  the  creatures  born  in  the  sun.  First 
the  mosses  and  lichens  and  stunted  herbage 
of  cold  regions,  then  the  more  luxurious  trees 
and  grasses  and  waving  ferns;  the  fish  in  the 
water ;  the  moving  rivers,  the  stupendous  tides ; 
the  beasts  that  traverse  the  ground ;  the  hosts 
of  birds  migrating  and  dancing  through 
space;     and,    frailest   of    all    the   myriads   of 

242 


ephemera,  those  beautiful  scraps  of  winged 
colour  that  go  sailing  away  light  as  thistle- 
seed  on  the  perilous  adventures  of  the  air; 
life,  the  varied  and  untold  play  of  motion  and 
colour  over  the  surface  of  the  dull  ground,  the 
fact  of  being,  clothed  with  the  phantom  of 
beauty,  —  this  is  the  flux  of  existence.  This 
helped  to  give  rise  to  the  "  Everything  is  flow- 
ing "  of  the  Greeks. 

So  from  core  to  verge,  from  inertia  to  intel- 
ligence, from  crude  to  complex,  there  is  al- 
ways a  greater  and  greater  play  allowed,  until 
we  come  to  the  region  (true  or  fabulous)  of 
pure  spirit,  where  being  may  have  its  essence 
unhampered  by  place  or  time.  We  do  not 
know  much  of  the  dominion  of  unincarnate 
soul,  but  we  are  agreed  in  according  it  the  ut- 
most latitude  of  come  and  go  and  in  denying 
it  all  fixity  save  that  of  purpose.  And  we 
speak  of  the  play  of  the  mind,  the  free  play 
of  the  intellect. 

Still  with  the  idea  of  play  as  meaning 
scope,  spread,  activity,  we  know  that  educa- 

243 


2Tijir  mnnfyip  of  Natttre 

tion  comes  through  achievement  alone;  that 
the  building  of  character  from  habit  is 
wrought  out  only  through  the  play  of  the 
individual  will.  Stultify  the  will,  prohibit  its 
play,  and  you  have  at  once  destroyed  its  power 
of  growth.  The  principle  of  life  is  movement, 
and  stagnation  is  death.  So  that  if  a  thing  has 
no  play,  you  may  be  sure  it  has  no  life. 

So,  too,  if  you  will  follow  the  trail  of  the 
word  into  meaning  of  playfulness  and  amuse- 
ment; perhaps  you  will  not  be  far  wrong  if  you 
declare  that  play  means  health.  Play  is  the 
fine  flavour  of  the  spirit,  the  expression  of  joy. 
Just  as  we  gain  freedom  for  the  play  of  our 
powers,  we  gain  enjoyment  in  the  playfulness 
of  spirit.  The  animals  play,  and  man  in  a 
normal,  healthy  state  takes  the  universe  for  his 
playroom.  To  be  a  doleful,  puritanic,  unso- 
cial Pharisee  is  to  be  a  degenerate.  A  sour 
visage  means  debauchery  of  the  soul,  as  truly 
as  other  appearances  indicate  bodily  intem- 
perance. To  keep  the  Ten  Commandments  is 
not  the  whole  business  of  man,  not  his  whole 

244 


duty;  it  is  only  a  beginning,  a  crude  makeshift 
of  conduct;  and  the  law  of  love  by  which  they 
were  superseded  brings  us  nearer  to  perfec- 
tion. 

Think  of  the  added  zest  we  might  have  if 
only  we  set  ourselves  to  play  the  role  assigned 
us  for  half  its  proper  worth.  To  act  with  sin- 
cerity, with  ease,  with  unfailing  graciousness; 
to  add  ever  so  little  to  the  store  of  gaiety;  to 
relieve  the  monotony  of  work;  to  soothe  un- 
conquerable sorrow;  to  go  lightly  and  pleas- 
antly across  the  boards,  and  leave  a  sense  of 
elation  and  good  nature  as  we  pass;  this  is  the 
method  to  make  us  not  regret  our  exit,  and, 
what  is  more  to  the  purpose,  this  is  the  sort 
of  play  to  make  our  fellows  the  happier  for 
our  acting,  however  small  the  part. 


245 


C^e  Scarlet  of  tlje  par 


Qfyt  Scarlet  of  tjjs  Meat 


i. 

The  beautiful  changes  of  the  seasons  come 
upon  us  so  furtively,  and  yet  so  surely,  that 
their  appearance  seems  sudden  at  last.  Day 
by  day,  through  the  dry  glow  of  August,  we 
say,  "The  summer  is  waning;  soon  we  shall 
see  the  hills  all  crimson;  even  now  there  is  a 
touch  of  Indian  summer  in  the  atmosphere, 
though  the  air  is  so  warm."  And  then,  after 
all,  it  takes  us  by  surprise  some  morning  to 
look  up  and  see  a  solitary  tree  all  scarlet  on 
the  mountain.  Yet  his  message  was  impera- 
tive and  could  suffer  no  delay;  prompt  as  the 
first  April  robin,  there  he  must  appear,  to  do 

249 


£0e  ftingQUi  of  Mature 

the  bidding  of  those  great  primary  powers 
we  are  pleased  to  call  Nature. 

Yes,  it  is  quite  true,  as  some  one  remarked 
the  other  day  editorially  (I  have  forgotten 
where),  we  are  for  ever  being  exhorted  to 
worship  Nature,  to  turn  from  our  overstrenu- 
ous  diligence,  our  overcentralized  life,  and 
come  back  to  the  primitive  conditions  of  the 
great  outdoor  world.  True,  that  is  our  native 
air;  we  shall  reap  good  from  it  in  abundance, 
if  we  are  wise;  and  I,  for  one,  should  be  glad 
to  see  the  whole  town  turned  out  into  the 
woods  for  three  months  every  year.  Ah,  how 
gladly  would  they  be  turned  out  if  they  could! 
But  that  is  our  fault,  my  friend,  yours  and 
mine  and  the  next  man's;  and  it  is  a  poor  les- 
son we  have  learned  from  this  great  Nature, 
if  we  have  not  taken  the  hint  of  generosity,  if 
we  have  not  learned  tolerance,  if  we  have  not 
been  infected  with  a  lofty  and  unflinching 
sweetness,  which  is  full  of  care  for  others'  joy 
as  well  as  our  own. 

What  do  they  say,  these  scarlet  priests  of 

250 


Ztyt  <Scarltt  of  ttjr  "Star 

the  hills?  Now  the  maples  have  put  on  their 
valiant  colours,  and  the  ash  and  beech  are 
robed  in  the  light  of  yellow  and  bronze;  the 
birches,  too,  and  the  wayfaring  tree  are  all 
in  bright  array.  What  is  the  meaning  of  so 
great  a  pomp  and  splendour?  Why  the 
gayest,  bravest  tints  in  the  season  of  decay, 
at  the  time  of  universal  perishing? 

There  is  no  answer.  Even  if  science  could 
tell  just  the  use  of  colour  in  the  scheme  of  life, 
we  should  have  our  metaphorical  or  symbol- 
istic sense  still  unsatisfied.  Meanwhile  the 
gladness  of  autumn  is  undoubted ;  the  strong 
heartening  note  is  sounded  everywhere  above 
the  dismal  ruin  of  summer  beauty.  Indeed,  it 
is  only  a  merging  of  the  lesser  beauty  into  the 
greater.  And  one  fancies  (fantastically,  in- 
deed) that  only  in  the  New  World  is  the  year's 
death  made  so  glorious,  as  if  not  until  now 
could  men  ever  imagine  that  death  is  anything 
but  ruin. 

"  No,  indeed,"  say  the  scarlet  priests  of  the 
mountains;   "behold  in  the  midst  of  unfaded 

251 


artje  W>iunt)ip  of  Itfatttre 

April  green  we  don  our  brightest  robes,  and 
give  you  the  New  Message,  —  even  we,  the 
lowly  folk  of  the  forest,  the  inarticulate  people 
of  the  wilderness.  We  would  have  you  to 
know  that  the  gladness  of  the  spring  is  nothing 
to  our  gladness.  In  the  childhood  of  your 
race,  you  worshipped  youth  and  love;  but 
now  that  you  are  grown  you  shall  wor- 
ship love  and  maturity.  And  death  itself 
shall  not  be  sad  to  you  any  more;  but  in  natu- 
ral sorrow  you  shall  still  valiantly  rejoice.  For 
it  is  better  to  triumph  than  to  hope;  it  is 
better  to  dare  than  to  desire.  What  do  they 
know  of  the  fulness  of  life,  who  have  never 
endured  the  rending  wind  and  the  riving 
frost?  Hear  us,  and  we  will  show  you  a  better 
way  than  the  pageant  of  the  buds  or  the  riot 
of  perishable  June!  Fortitude,  gladness,  pa- 
tience, a  smiling  front  in  face  of  disaster,  these 
be  your  watchwords  for  ever!" 

This,  you  say,  is  only  our  own  thought  put 
in  the  mouth  of  the  forest  people.  But  who 
shall  say  how  much  of  our  natural  resignation 

252 


ftJje  Scarlet  of  tije  ¥rat 

may  not  have  come,  by  subtle  and  potent  influ- 
ences, from  these  very  children  of  the  moun- 
tainside? And  who  can  tell  how  great  has 
been  the  effect  of  the  splendour  of  autumn  on 
our  idea  of  perfection?  The  forces  of  sugges- 
tion and  association  are  so  mysterious  and  so 
strong,  so  delicate  in  their  hidden  working, 
that  one's  thoughts  about  the  solemnities  of 
death  and  the  completion  of  life  might  well 
come  from  sources  as  frail  as  a  turning  leaf  or 
a  seeding  thistle. 

Where,  then,  is  the  influence  of  the  scarlet 
of  the  year  found  in  our  art?  How  does  it 
make  itself  felt  in  those  works  of  our  hands 
which  represent  us  as  a  race?  Think  of  the 
artists  you  know,  writers  or  painters  or  crea- 
tors of  the  beautiful  in  any  form;  in  whose 
work  among  them  all  do  you  find  the  brave 
scarlet  note?  It  is  not  felt  everywhere,  cer- 
tainly. You  would  not  say  that  Arnold  has 
it,  beloved  and  lovely  as  he  is.  His  is  the 
gray-green  of  a  French  forest  or  a  southern 
olive  grove.    You  would  not  say  it  is  in  Ten- 

253 


£t)e  liiusijtj)  of  Nature 

nyson;  his  colour  is  purple,  the  rich  ennobled 
tinge  of  dignity  and  meditation.  And  the  pre- 
Raphaelites?  Certainly  they  have  colour  to 
spare,  but  not  in  the  sense  I  mean.  It  is  not 
their  province  to  raise  a  response  to  any  cheer 
from  the  troubled  heart  of  their  days.  But  in 
Emerson  and  Browning,  there  you  may  see  at 
once  the  interpreted  gospel  of  the  scarlet  leaf. 
The  English  poet  never  saw  a  bit  of  the  New 
World  forest  in  its  raw  brilliancy  of  fall;  but 
do  you  not  feel  sure  it  would  have  delighted 
him  —  at  once  so  subtle  and  so  barbaric? 

And  to  whom,  but  to  him  and  Emerson,  are 
we  to  turn  for  that  assurance  to  the  spirit 
which  Nature  is  preaching  in  her  own  dumb 
way  from  a  thousand  mountainsides  to-day? 
There  is  another,  too,  whom  common  consent 
of  criticism  holds  in  lower  esteem,  but  for 
whom  I  cannot  help  having  an  equal  love.  I 
am  not  sure  that  one  does  not  love  him,  so 
human,  so  humane,  so  modest  and  kindly,  even 
more  than  any  of  the  greater  masters.  And  on 
every  page  he  wrote  you  will  find  traces  of  this 

254 


£t)t  Bcarlrt  of  W  ¥eat 

scarlet  glory,  this  unquelled  triumphant  festi- 
val of  the  spirit,  putting  failure  and  defeat 
aside  for  ever.  Who  is  there  who  loves  men 
and  books  and  nature,  and  can  witness  the  gay 
procession  of  scarlet  on  the  hills,  without  a 
thought  of  unconquerable  Robert  Louis? 


II. 


In  the  first  blush  of  our  autumnal  season, 
it  is  the  splendour  and  scarlet  of  it  that  most 
appeal  to  us.  The  green-feasted  eye,  full  of 
the  luxurious  leisure  of  the  quiet  foliage,  picks 
out  at  once  the  first  fleck  of  crimson,  conspicu- 
ous as  a  stain,  —  a  spilth  of  blood  or  wine  on 
the  vest  of  nature.  This  is  the  sign,  the  pres- 
age, the  portent  of  rehabilitation;  and  we 
must  leap  at  heart  for  the  valiant  tinge.  It  is 
the  colour  of  war,  of  energy,  of  manliness,  of 
fortitude,  of  endurance,  linking  us  with  our 
primitive   instincts,    calling   up   the   dejected 


255 


£t)t  Zunstjiji  of  Nature 

spirit  to  new  endeavours,  heartening  the  dis- 
couraged and  reviving  the  worn. 

"  Courage,  O  divine  vagabond,"  it  seems  to 
say,  "  already  the  turn  of  the  road  is  here,  the 
banners  of  the  Delectable  City  are  in  sight. 
Brace,  thee,  then,  for  one  effort  more.  Am  I 
not  the  symbol  to  thee  of  triumph?  Do  not 
lassitude  and  doubt  and  cynicism  flee  before 
me?  Why,  then,  ever  be  faint-hearted  again? 
To-day  is  thine,  and  the  promise  of  the  mor- 
row is  in  my  hand." 

But  when  the  first  impression  of  the  scarlet 
world  has  worn  off,  when  the  sense  becomes 
accustomed  to  so  much  magnificent  display, 
we  perceive  other  beauties,  new  and  strange, 
mingling  with  the  red.  The  softer,  subtle 
richness  of  the  tapestry  comes  out;  elusive  and 
lovely  shades,  unperceived  at  first,  reveal 
themselves  to  the  studious  and  enraptured 
gaze.  It  is  not  the  raw  splendour  of  the  bar- 
baric kingly  show  that  is  most  powerful  over 
us;  there  are  shyer  hidden  influences  of  pale 
attractiveness  as  well,  here  a  scrap  of  pure 

256 


yellow,  there  a  tint  of  sheer  purple  or  blue  or 
lavender. 

It  seems  to  me  that  I  have  never  known  a 
year  half  so  voluptuous  in  colours  as  this.  Is 
it  not  so?  Before  September  had  left  the  hills, 
every  one  was  aware  of  the  unusual  lavishness 
and  wonderful  beauty  of  pigment.  Only  in 
dreams  or  in  fairy  tales  could  such  pomp  be 
possible.  The  leaves  unwithered  kept  all 
their  fresh  perfection  of  June,  with  the  added 
marvel  of  crimson  or  russet.  One  gazed 
across  the  mountain  valleys  from  peak  to  peak 
as  across  a  scarlet  world.  And  in  the  silent, 
brooding  air  it  would  not  have  been  incredible 
to  people  that  wonderland  with  all  the  shapes 
of  fancy  from  Homer's  time  to  ours.  You 
said  to  yourself,  "  Surely,  I  shall  never  see  the 
like  of  this  again,"  and  then  bade  a  sorrowful 
farewell  to  those  high  stretches  of  red  hill  and 
sweeping  air. 

And  yet  the  shore  in  its  more  sober  garb  was 
just  as  wonderful,  just  as  unusual.  If  the  hills 
were  arrayed  like  kings,  the  marshes  and  open 

257 


2Fijc  1aintii)ip  of  Xatmre 

fields  of  the  seaboard  were  emperors  of  their 
own  dominion,  too.  In  the  first  days  of  October 
a  drenching  storm  and  chilly  twilight  landed 
me  at  one  hospitable  hearthstone  on  the  south 
shore.  The  wind  was  out  of  the  northeast, 
gusting  and  quarrelsome,  and  it  caught  a  trav- 
eller unprepared.  There  could  be  no  joy  of 
nature  in  such  weather;  protection,  friends, 
and  fire  were  the  only  things.  But  the  next 
morning  uprose  one  of  those  matchless  days 
which  seem  to  come  on  purpose  to  belie  our 
gloomy  apprehension.  The  clear  sky,  the 
drying  roads,  the  fresh,  wholesome  wind,  the 
talking  leaves,  and  the  far-off  sparkle  of  the 
sea.  The  most  confirmed  morning  hater  could 
not  refrain  from  a  stroll  before  breakfast.  In 
that  new  world  by  a  quiet,  woody  road,  some 
hours  later  our  mother  Autumn  showed  me 
her  latest  study  in  raw  colour.  Side  by  side 
above  the  stone  wall  stood  a  crimson  maple 
and  a  yellow  poplar.  As  you  looked  up  in 
passing  the  light  struck  through  them  from 
behind  you,  drenching  their  pure  tints  in  lux- 

*5* 


STJje  Scarlet  of  tfjt  ¥eat4 

urious  living  light,  on  a  background  of  the 
unmitigated  blue. 

"  There,"  I  said,  "  is  the  trinity  of  colour," 
—  the  blue  which  was  nothing  but  blue,  the 
yellow  which  was  nothing  but  yellow,  and  the 
other  crimson.  You  might  study  them  at  your 
ease.  Look  straight  into  the  deep  red  of  the 
maple  before  you,  or  into  the  yellow  of  the 
aspen  to  your  right,  or  into  the  blue  between 
them.  Then  aloft  where  the  tops  swayed 
across  the  sky,  you  got  the  contrast  of  the  red 
with  the  yellow.  Look  steadily  a  moment  at 
the  warm  red  of  the  maple  cut  against  that 
cerulean  hanging,  and  try  to  feel  its  mean- 
ing;  then  shift  your  eyes  to  the  yellow* 

It  does  not  do  to  be  fanciful  on  paper,  how- 
ever one  may  dream  between  sunrise  and  sun- 
set. But  I  am  sure  you  would  agree  to  the 
greater  nobility  of  the  spiritual  yellow,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  burly  physical  red.  And  be- 
hind them  all  the  incorruptible  blue,  the 
primal  thought.  There  lay  the  deep  strong 
tone  of  the  blood-red  tree,  so  physical,  so  sure, 

259 


Etjc  liiustjtp  of  Mature 

so  unabashed  and  sufficient.  And  beside  it 
the  sheer  ethereal  tremulousness  of  the  yellow, 
—  the  colour  of  spirit,  the  colour  that  makes 
us  feel.  But  before  ever  we  could  move  or 
love,  there  was  the  great  blue  thought  which 
comprehended  the  beginning  and  overarches 
the  whole. 

If  you  think  of  these  elementary  colours  as 
symbols  of  certain  qualities,  you  will  see  some- 
thing more  than  a  mere  wayward  fancy  in  such 
a  title  as  "The  Red  Fairy  Book,"  or  "The 
Blue  Fairy  Book."  You  will  think  of  colour 
not  merely  as  an  attribute  of  this  good  world, 
but  as  an  index  of  our  own  inward  emotional 
life  as  well.  It  is  as  if,  when  all  the  earth  lay 
finished  from  the  hand  of  the  great  Artifex, 
perfect  in  construction,  lovely  in  form,  wait- 
ing only  the  final  impulse,  he  had  smiled  above 
his  work,  and  that  benign  look  was  communi- 
cated to  the  new-made  handicraft  in  the  guise 
of  colour,  —  a  superfluous  manifestation  of 
beauty,  the  very  breath  or  spirit  of  the  Creator. 

And  ever  since,  to  keep  us  in  mind  of  the 

260 


STfje  Scarlet  of  tfje  ¥eat 

Creator's  heritage  of  joy,  colour  remains  on 
the  face  of  the  world,  a  possession  of  the  spirit. 
They  who  deal  in  its  appreciation  and  expres- 
sion are  peculiarly  the  guardians  of  a  sacred 
trust,  receiving  from  it  intimations  of  finer 
significance  than  the  average  eye  can  gather, 
and  expressing  through  it  the  most  intimate 
and  delicate  thoughts  and  yearnings. 


261 


(gooti  ^fortune 


<£ootr  fortune 


"  Henceforth  I  ask  not  good  fortune,  I 
myself  am  good  fortune,"  says  Whitman.  But 
under  what  conditions?  He  enunciates  this 
happy  wisdom  in  the  poem  where  he  has  just 
declared,  "  Afoot  and  light-hearted,  I  take  to 
the  open  road."  Good  fortune,  he  would  seem 
to  say,  resides  in  freedom,  in  immunity.  Yet 
there  is  more  than  that  necessary.  It  is  not 
enough  to  sell  all  we  have;  we  must  follow 
in  the  Way.  Good  fortune  is  not  an  endow- 
ment of  circumstance  merely;  it  is  rather  a 
tenet  of  the  mind,  a  mood  of  the  spirit,  and 
a  physical  attribute.  It  comes  to  us  like  a 
strain  of  harmonious  being,  when  our  com- 
plex nature  is  in  accord  with  the  visible  world, 
and  attuned  to  its  own  secret  note. 

265 


£ije  luustjuj  of  Nature 

"  Afoot  and  light-hearted,"  no  ill-fortune 
can  overpower  us.  In  the  pursuit  of  happy, 
primitive  exercise,  the  simple  needs  of  the 
body  are  satisfied;  and  its  magnetic  enthusi- 
asm is  communicated  to  the  spirit.  Emanci- 
pated from  roofs  and  windows,  setting  forth 
for  the  unknown,  physical  needs  reduced  to  a 
minimum,  we  become  adventurers  and  dis- 
coverers, touched  with  elemental  daring 
(timorous,  secluded  creatures  that  we  are!), 
elated  by  a  breath  of  nature.  It  is  so  that 
good  fortune  comes  to  the  traveller. 

And  is  it  not  true  that  whenever  we  taste 
the  sweet  of  life  we  are  in  this  nomadic  frame 
of  mind?  A  certain  sense  of  detachment  and 
irresponsibility  seems  necessary  to  happiness, 
—  a  freedom  purchased  most  cheaply,  after 
all,  at  the  price  of  obligations  discharged  and 
duties  done.  Good  fortune,  true  success,  is 
the  indwelling  radiance  and  serenity  that 
comes  and  goes  so  mysteriously  in  every  hu- 
man tenement.  Expect  her  not,  and  she  ar- 
rives; seek  to  detain  her  with  elaborate  argu- 

266 


^ootr  iFortttiu 

ment  or  excuse,  and  she  is  gone.  Yet  must 
the  door  ever  be  open  for  her  coming,  and  the 
board  spread  for  her  entertainment.  So  fleet- 
ing and  incalculable  is  the  best,  so  outside  our 
own  control,  that  we  say  it  comes  by  the  grace 
of  God. 

Let  this  be  so,  indeed.  Still  the  avenues  for 
the  approach  of  happiness  are  to  some  extent 
surely  within  our  own  control.  To  be  clean 
and  temperate  and  busy,  to  try  to  keep  our- 
selves strong  and  healthy,  not  to  wear  injuri- 
ous clothes,  nor  to  follow  pernicious  customs, 
to  simplify  the  mechanism  of  living  and  enrich 
the  motive,  and  to  avoid  fanaticism,  this  is  the 
part  of  wisdom.  It  is  first  of  all  important,  in 
seeking  good  fortune,  that  we  should  be  able 
to  secure  coordination  and  sympathy  between 
body,  mind,  and  heart.  To  do  this,  evidently, 
we  must  be  adaptable,  —  must  try  to  have  the 
open  mind,  the  spirit  of  charity,  the  available 
strength,  and  readiness  of  body.  That  folly 
is  only  too  palpable  which  fancies  that  happi- 


267 


Efje  mvifiWp  of  Mature 

ness  could  be  found  in  any  one  of  the  three 
natures  that  make  up  man.  Certainly  not  in 
purely  physical  or  sensual  conditions  does  it 
flourish.  We  vainly  seek  it  in  creature  com- 
forts alone,  in  physical  delights  alone.  Equally 
futile  is  our  search  for  it  in  the  kingdom  of 
the  mind.  That  is  a  noble  fallacy,  but  a  fal- 
lacy none  the  less,  which  pins  its  faith  to 
knowledge.  Time  out  of  mind  there  have 
been  those  who  hoped  to  find  happiness  in 
the  affairs  of  the  intellect,  and  still  it  has 
eluded  them.  His  royal  master  said  of  Lan- 
f ranc,  "  The  day  is  coming,  I  see  it  afar, 
when  these  thin  men  will  set  their  feet  upon 
our  corselets."  And  there  is  always  a  tend- 
ency toward  that  extreme. 

Then,  too,  how  many  are  the  children  of 
joy,  —  those  who  pursue  happiness  in  the  wide 
bright  fields  of  passion,  —  not  the  crude  pas- 
sions of  the  senses,  but  the  delicate  passions  of 
the  spirit!  How  many  devotees,  how  many 
lovers !    How  many  who  have  worn  away  their 


268 


<&oofc  iFottune 

lives  in  an  ecstasy  of  longing  or  prayer  or  ex- 
pectation. And  yet  the  loftiest  religious  ela- 
tion, the  lonely  frozen  nobility  of  soul  which 
belongs  to  the  enthusiast  and  the  believer,  — 
cannot  be  called  good  fortune,  but  only  a  part 
of  good  fortune.  It  avails  me  nothing  to  see 
visions,  if  I  am  dyspeptic  and  cannot  under- 
stand the  Pons  assinorum.  The  pugilist,  the 
zealot,  the  bookworm,  —  each  of  these  is  but 
a  third  of  a  man,  and  none  is  more  worthy 
than  the  other.  An  ignorant  and  brutalized 
athlete  is  just  as  far  from  complete  manhood 
as  a  puny  scholar  or  a  blind  bigot.  And  dif- 
ferential calculus  alone  is  just  as  far  from 
affording  sufficient  education  as  football  is. 

Our  best  ideals  have  long  since  ceased  to 
uphold  the  supremacy  of  the  body.  But 
neither  must  we  despise  it,  as  the  Puritans 
did.  Rather  should  we  keep  in  view  the  due 
culture  and  gradual  perfection  of  body  and 
mind  and  spirit,  discountenancing  any  favour 
to  one  above  another.  For  Whitman's  ideal 
is  the  best.     "  I   myself   am  good   fortune." 

269 


£?)*  litustjU)  of  TSfature 

And  we  should  always  aim  to  keep  ourselves 
so  healthy  that  every  day,  as  we  step  out  of 
doors,  we  can  say  after  him,  "  Afoot  and  light- 
hearted  I  take  to  the  open  road." 


270 


Cfje  Befoattrfjerp  of  jHocfa 


Cfje 

Befcaucfjenj  of  ittooo 


THERE  are  so  many  ways  of  making  wreck 
of  this  perilous  gift  of  life!  A  little  too  strenu- 
ous or  a  little  too  weak,  a  little  too  hot  or  a 
little  too  cold,  a  little  too  fast  or  a  little  too 
slow,  a  little  too  severe  or  a  little  too  lax,  and 
we  are  undone.  So  nice  an  adjustment  seems 
to  be  needed  to  bring  our  lives  to  anything  like 
success  and  a  decent  termination.  So  deli- 
cately are  we  balanced,  as  it  were,  on  the  very 
brink  between  sweeping  current  and  relentless 
eddy.  An  overfrail  physique,  and  all  your 
splendid  attainments  of  mind  and  lofty  ambi- 
tions are  brought  prematurely  to  the  ground. 
Or,  again,  a  stout  and  hardy  endowment  of 

273 


art)*  WHnu^ip  of  Xatttre 

body,  and  you  may  be  undone  by  some  uncon- 
querable habit.  For  habit,  like  disease,  is 
often  hereditary,  and  as  often  contracted.  It 
is  germinal  in  its  origin,  but  sure  and  virulent 
in  effect.  Who  does  not  see  in  his  own  round 
of  life  a  score  of  his  friends  undone  by  some 
minute  lack,  some  flaw  in  the  adjustment  of 
their  powers? 

Yet  the  great  world  moves  on.  Even  our 
own  small  life  proceeds.  For  whether  it  be  to 
failure  or  success,  the  first  need  of  being  is 
endurance,  —  to  endure  with  gladness  if  we 
can,  with  fortitude  in  any  event.  This  is  the 
core  of  life;  this  is  the  kernel  of  nature.  How 
then  shall  he  contrive  to  keep  always  near  that 
central  truth,  the  progress  of  existence?  How 
shall  we  manage  to  share  the  glad  strength  of 
the  earth,  in  spite  of  pain  and  danger  and  sor- 
row and  bitter  disappointment?  It  is  not  quite 
enough  to  be  stoical.  Or,  perhaps  one  ought 
to  say,  it  is  too  much.  For  the  stoics,  one  feels, 
were  inclined  to  shut  up  the  doors  of  the  heart 
against  the  great  currents  of  pity  and  love. 

274 


2TI)e  lirfcaucfjers  of  JHootr 

They  hardly  kept  a  welcome  for  joy;  and 
when  pleasure  visited  them,  they  were  unpre- 
pared to  make  her  at  home.  It  seems  there 
was  too  stubborn  and  negative  a  blend  in  their 
philosophy.  To  be  stoical  and  nothing  more 
is  to  be  stolid.  Whereas  surely  one  should 
grow  and  change,  be  happy  and  sad,  with 
changing  and  growing  nature ;  nor  should  one 
always  live  indoors  at  the  centre  of  one's  self, 
but  occasionally  come  to  the  entry  of  being 
to  meet  one's  friends,  to  take  the  air  of  exist- 
ence, to  look  abroad  on  the  hills  and  valleys 
of  universal  life.  One  should  not  be  uncon- 
scious of  mood,  in  short. 

Yes,  mood  is  necessary;  mood  is  good  and 
helpful;  and  anyhow  it  is  inescapable.  He 
who  defies  it  is  a  rash  man  and  far  from  wise. 
It  is  only  by  taking  advantage  of  mood,  of 
the  mysterious,  uncharted,  and  invisible  tides 
of  the  spirit,  that  we  shall  ever  make  any 
successful  ventures  upon  the  deep  sea  of  life, 
or  bring  our  craft  safely  to  port  at  last. 
Whether  in  art,  or  in  science,  or  in  the  affairs 

275 


&1)t  Ztiusijtj)  of  Mature 

of  men,  he  who  works  with  mood  will  be  more 
successful  than  he  who  works  without  it.  As 
for  the  mistaken  man  who  sets  himself  to  an 
accomplishment  in  defiance  of  his  mood,  time 
must  teach  him  his  own  folly.  He  is  like  the 
daring  and  rebellious  child  who  has  never 
heard  of  the  expression  Deo  volente,  but  pur- 
poses this  or  that,  untempered  by  restriction, 
ignorant  of  fortune,  defiant  of  fate. 

In  old  times  men  governed  their  actions  by 
the  stars  or  by  auspices.  They  would  under- 
take nothing  unless  the  planets  were  propi- 
tious; and  if  they  failed  conspicuously,  then 
the  gods  were  against  them,  or  the  time  in 
their  horoscope  had  not  arrived.  They  waited 
upon  the  convenient  season,  and  sought  out 
many  inventions  for  divining  it.  In  later  years 
we  have  made  mood  a  god.  To-day,  if  I 
would  invest  money,  or  see  a  friend,  or  write 
a  letter,  or  buy  a  horse,  or  paint  a  picture,  I 
no  longer  consult  a  soothsayer  or  con  the  pages 
of  an  ephemeris;  I  look  into  my  own  dark 
mind  and  say,  "  Am  I  in  the  mood  for  it?  " 

276 


<ZTt)r  Bct)auct)cvi>  of  JHootr 

We  have  made  mood  a  touchstone  of  action. 
Our  fathers  made  duty  their  priestess.  It 
may  be  we  are  straying  too  far  from  their 
honourable  faith,  hard  and  narrow  and  cruel 
though  it  could  be.  But  that  was  the  evil  of 
extremes.  We  may  be  in  peril  from  the  oppo- 
site error,  and  duty  is  a  word  that  is  drop- 
ping out  of  current  use.  Mood  has  usurped 
its  place. 

But  there  is  a  debauchery  of  mood,  just  as 
there  is  an  insanity  of  duty.  An  unflinching 
observance  of  duty,  unmodified  by  any  other 
idea,  by  mercy,  by  love,  by  gentleness,  by 
generosity,  might  readily  lead  to  almost  in- 
human hardness.  The  devotee  of  duty  may 
become  an  unlovely  and  pestiferous  mono- 
maniac, a  burden  to  himself  and  an  infliction 
to  others.  We  all  know  how  angular  and 
sour  and  uncomfortable  a  fanatic  can  be.  It 
matters  not  whether  he  is  a  religious  fanatic  or 
a  free-thinker,  his  inordinate  devotion  to  his 
one  conception  of  life  is  a  nuisance.    He  is  so 


277 


2TJ)f  XiiusijU)  of  Xatttr* 

stiff-necked  that  he  cannot  see  anything  outside 
of  his  own  pasture.  The  beautiful  plasticity 
of  human  nature  at  its  best  seems  to  have  been 
left  out  of  him. 

On  the  other  hand,  how  much  better  is  your 
modern  watery  sentimentalist?  Duty  for  him 
is  an  old  fabulous  fetich.  He  maunders  and 
meanders  down  the  pavements  of  life,  as  he 
would  through  a  rose  garden.  He  knows  no 
law  but  the  indulgence  of  whim  and  the 
obedience  to  mood.  He  may  have  no  strong 
evil  propensities,  but  his  flabby  subservience 
to  mood  is  a  spiritual  debauchery  in  itself. 

It  is  written  in  "  The  Book  of  St.  Kavin," 
"  Take  heed  lest  ye  be  overtaken  in  debauch- 
ery of  mood."  And,  indeed,  it  is  a  malady 
likely  to  attack  the  finest  spirits.  Knowing 
how  essential  mood  is  to  the  accomplishment 
of  anything  worth  while,  they  wait  upon  its 
coming.  Too  seldom  does  it  occur  to  them 
that  mood  is  in  any  degree  controllable.  Yet 
it  is  so.    And  while  we  wait  upon  mood,  we 


278 


£8*  Betjatutjers  of  J**ootr 

must  also  order  and  direct  it;  for  mood  is 
like  fire,  a  good  servant,  but  an  evil  master. 
Have  all  your  hopes  and  plans  come  to  ground 
in  a  day?  Has  sorrow  knocked  at  your  door? 
Has  circumstance  foiled  your  most  generous 
wish?  Still  there  is  this  life  to  be  lived,  and 
road  of  fortitude  to  be  followed.  Wait  not 
upon  returning  mood  for  your  happiness,  but 
set  forward  at  once.  Perchance  then  the  mood 
will  follow  you,  with  sunny  face.  If  not,  still 
there  is  the  satisfaction  that  your  part  in  the 
work  of  the  universe  will  not  have  been 
slighted.  Rightly  assimilated,  adversity,  that 
bitter  tonic,  may  yet  yield  health  and  a  smil- 
ing countenance.  So  at  last  we  may  attain  a 
measure  of  nobility  of  character,  so  that  mood 
will  follow  us  like  a  patient  sister,  and  we 
shall  be  feeble  slaves  of  her  caprice  no  more. 

To  sorrow,  to  misfortune,  to  anger,  to 
hatred,  do  not  give  way.  Have,  if  possible,  a 
sane  rule  of  conduct,  and  adhere  to  that  gladly. 
For  without  adherence  to  some  line  of  prog- 
ress, how  shall  he  hope  for  anything  but  drift- 

279 


ing  discontent?  Let  us  keep  mood,  but  as  a 
servant;  and  let  us  keep  duty,  —  as  a  servant, 
too.  For  greater  than  either  is  the  free  spirit 
of  man. 


280 


<&i  jtto&eratton 


<&f  JWotetatum 


It  is  not  the  safety  of  moderation  but  its 
beauty  and  power  that  make  it  so  excellent 
and  so  desirable  a  virtue.  A  controlled  and 
regulated  force  is  an  agent  that  may  make  for 
usefulness,  for  good,  for  happiness;  an  un- 
controlled force  can  be  nothing  but  a  menace. 

At  first  glance  we  are  apt  to  think  somewhat 
slightingly  of  moderation.  The  good  even 
seem  somewhat  tame  and  uninteresting  in 
comparison  with  their  more  reckless  and  less 
responsible  fellows.  We  are  abashed  at  the 
presence  of  evil;  we  are  horrified  and  con- 
fused that  it  should  prevail;  and  yet  we  can- 
not altogether  restrain  a  lingering  tinge  of 
admiration  for  its  forceful  procedure.  We 
perceive  that  it  does  not  restrain  itself;  that 

283 


it  demands  and  often  secures  free  play  for  its 
energies;  its  exhibition  of  efficient  and  capa- 
ble power  dazzles  us.  We  are  put  out  of 
conceit  with  respectability,  and  become  half 
convinced  that  the  bad  is  not  half  so  bad,  after 
all.    We  are  ready  to  sneer  at  moderation. 

But  we  make  a  mistake  here,  we  mistake  a 
supine  and  cowardly  respectability  for  good- 
ness. Now,  respectability,  mere  respectability, 
is  not  goodness  at  all;  it  is  only  another  form 
of  weakness.  The  person  who  takes  refuge 
among  the  respectable,  without  any  further 
attempt  to  do  actual  good,  to  be  actively  good, 
is  nothing  but  a  poltroon,  afraid  to  follow  his 
bent.  He  will  probably  go  to  a  worse  place 
than  is  prepared  for  many  a  transgressor. 

But  respectability  is  not  moderation;  it  is 
stagnation.  There  is  no  virtue  in  respecta- 
bility, for  virtue  is  an  active  principle,  and  the 
essence  of  respectability  is  dull,  stupid,  self- 
ish, timid  inaction.  If  you  are  good  you  may 
be  respectable;  but  if  you  set  for  yourself  no 
standard   beyond    the   negative   blamelessness 

284 


<Df  JHotreratCou 

of  being  respectable  you  are  on  the  highway 
to  perdition.  It  is  not  goodness  that  fills  your 
soul,  but  lethargy.  You  shudder  at  the  crimi- 
nal classes;  you  lull  yourself  with  a  cushioned 
chromo-Christianity,  but  your  own  spiritual 
and  intellectual  and  material  life  is  in  itself 
a  crime.  You  are  an  incumbrance  to  society, 
to  say  the  least. 

Moderation  is  a  very  different  thing.  It 
is  the  conservation  of  power.  It  is  the  saving 
grace  which  sweetens  conduct.  It  makes 
virtue  pleasant  and  kindly;  it  makes  beauty 
to  be  of  effect  in  the  world;  it  makes  reason 
prevail.  Moderation  is  the  wisdom  which 
never  quite  exhausts  its  reservoirs  of  power; 
which  never  permits  depletion,  and  is,  there- 
fore, never  exhausted.  It  always  has  forces  in 
reserve,  and  so  triples  the  impression  made  by 
the  forces  it  has  in  use.  Moderation  is  not 
a  penurious  aversion  to  expenditure;  it  is  a 
sane  and  strong  disposition  of  power.  It  means 
control  and  efficiency. 

The  logic  of  extremes  is  notoriously  uncer- 

285 


SH&e  ftiustHi)  of  Mature 

tain ;  the  beauty  of  extremes  is  even  more 
doubtful.  Note  that  in  extremes  you  have 
energy  enough  to  waste,  spending  itself  in  its 
last  expiring  effort.  But  beauty  must  always 
embody  power  and  reserve.  There  is  no 
beauty  in  exaggeration  and  overemphasis,  nor 
in  the  weakness  of  imperfection.  Beauty  in 
sculpture,  for  instance,  resides  in  the  consum- 
mate moment;  beauty  in  painting,  in  the  bal- 
ance of  hues.  In  everything  beautiful,  I 
think,  one  has  the  sense  of  exquisite  modera- 
tion, a  sense  of  poise,  of  expectancy,  of  reser- 
vation, as  well  as  of  satisfaction.  One  feels 
whether  in  music  or  poetry,  whether  in  art 
or  life,  in  contemplating  beauty,  that  here  the 
great  spiritual  force  of  the  universe  was 
brought  into  play  and  arrested  for  a  moment 
in  mid  career.  There  is  no  strain,  but  only 
strength.  As  perfect  and  competent  strength 
cannot  know  strain,  so  perfect  beauty  cannot 
know  intemperance  nor  overstatement.  Haste, 
anger,  bigotry,  sloth,  all  these  destroy  beauty, 
because  they  destroy  moderation.   They  make 

286 


<£f  JWotrerat.uw 

beauty  in  art  and  beauty  in  daily  life  alike 
impossible,  for  that  one  reason.  They  prevent 
us  from  living  centrally  and  normally;  they 
unhinge  our  poise;  they  cloud  the  mind, 
hamper  the  body,  and  make  the  spirit  un- 
happy; they  take  away  from  us  those  rare 
moments  of  calm  contentment,  when  the  hu- 
man soul  stands  on  the  brink  of  exaltation, 
half-way  between  hope  and  despair.  They 
rush  us  into  one  extreme  or  another,  so  that  we 
cannot  come  into  full  contact  with  the  powers 
of  the  universe.  They  make  us  too  emphat- 
ically our  single  selves,  —  petty,  wilful,  and 
unwise.  They  drive  us  to  extremes.  If  I  were 
a  wave,  I  should  belong  most  completely 
to  the  great  surrounding  sea,  when  I  was  at 
mid  height  between  crest  and  trough.  So  my 
own  human  life  is  most  nearly  in  accord  with 
the  greater  life  which,  it  seems,  must  infuse 
the  universe,  not  when  I  am  carried  beyond 
the  bounds  of  moderation,  but  I  am  at  poise, 
a  normal,  undistracted  being. 

The  idea  is  easily  illustrated  in  many  ways. 

287 


2Tlje  ItiufiWi)  of  Katute 

You  may  see  many  arts  injured  by  lack  of 
moderation.  We  build  a  huge  opera  house, 
for  example,  not  content  with  a  moderate  size. 
What  is  the  result?  The  singers  must  strain 
their  voices  to  the  limit,  so  that  shading  and 
all  delicacy  of  interpretation  are  lost.  So, 
too,  in  human  speech.  How  much  more  con- 
vincing our  conversation  would  be,  if  it  were 
more  moderate,  —  more  moderate  in  its  dic- 
tion, its  vocabulary,  its  tones,  its  inflections. 
Speech  is  a  means  of  expression  and  may  be 
beautiful,  comprehensive,  full  of  delight  and 
power.  Too  often  we  permit  it  to  become 
either  a  mumble  or  a  shriek.  We  exaggerate 
and  emphasize  and  insist,  until  all  truth  is  lost 
and  all  power  of  conviction  destroyed.  Our 
personal  expression  becomes  palpably  false, 
frayed  and  worn  thin  by  overstress.  This  is 
true  of  all  physical  habit;  we  rush  and  hurry, 
or  we  slouch  and  dawdle,  regardless  of  the  fact 
that  by  so  doing  we  lose  all  spontaneity,  all 
magnetism,  all  power  which  inherently  be- 
longs in  beauty  of  motion. 

288 


$tmcspi)ere 


&tmospi)ere 


In  its  secondary  sense  atmosphere  is  a  word 
which  is  only  lately  come  into  common  use. 
The  artists,  I  suppose,  have  introduced  it  and 
given  it  currency.  Atmosphere  is  to  fact  what 
the  bloom  is  to  the  grape,  —  the  mark  of  im- 
maculate perfection,  imperceptible  to  the 
casual  or  careless  glance,  yet  full  of  wonder 
and  charm  to  the  thoughtful  observer.  At- 
mosphere is  the  aroma  of  spirit,  the  aura  or 
emanation  of  being;  and  he  is  a  happy  artist 
who  has  the  least  command  of  such  a  perish- 
able finish  for  his  work. 

One  sees  so  often  a  picture  or  piece  of  sculp- 
ture, immensely  clever,  apt,  refined,  full  of 
dignity,  graceful  in  proportion,  restful  in  line, 
of  rich  and  harmonious  colour,  the  idea  trans- 

291 


Wfyz  ftf nstjf n  of  Kature 

ferred  to  the  very  life,  and  yet  one  can  say  of 
it:  "Yes,  but  it  has  no  atmosphere!"  And 
there  is  the  fatal  sentence  pronounced.  Again, 
you  come  upon  a  creation  which  seems  upon 
scrutiny  to  be  a  tissue  of  faults.  There  is  noth- 
ing right  about  it;  bad  colour,  bad  drawing, 
false  execution,  slovenly  technique;  yet  some- 
how, in  spite  of  all  that,  even  so  poor  a  thing 
as  this  may  tug  at  your  sympathy;  it  may  be 
able  to  cast  a  glamour  over  you  for  the  mo- 
ment, for  all  its  badness.  It  may  have  atmos- 
phere. True,  this  is  unlikely,  and  a  touch 
of  atmosphere  alone  will  not  save  a  poor  crea- 
tion. Yet,  how  welcome,  how  delightful  it  is! 
In  people,  too,  as  well  as  in  facts  and  ob- 
jects, atmosphere  counts  for  so  much.  There 
are  many  personalities,  only  too  many,  in 
whom  it  is  lacking.  They  are  excellent,  even 
irreproachable,  citizens,  and  exemplary 
friends  maybe;  but  they  are  purely  negative 
or  neutral;  they  seem  to  be  invested  with  not 
a  particle  of  mysterious  envelopment  which 
lends  glamour  to  the  individual,  and  irradiates 

292 


the  character.  Without  atmosphere  there  may 
be  force,  directness,  even  beauty,  but  the  ut- 
most reach  of  power  will  be  wanting.  The 
hard  light  of  character  needs  to  be  somewhat 
diffused  and  tempered  by  an  atmospheric 
quality  in  its  expression.  And  since  expres- 
sion is  a  matter  of  art,  one  is  almost  tempted 
to  say  that  art  consists  in  the  creation  of  atmos- 
phere. Be  as  faithful  to  reality  (or  to  ro- 
mance) as  you  please,  but  surround  your 
transcription  with  an  atmosphere;  bestow 
upon  it  the  magic  air  and  colour  which  are 
its  own  indeed,  but  which  shall  still  convince 
and  transport  us  beyond  the  actual. 

"The  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is; 
The  little  less,  and  what  worlds  away." 

In  matters  of  art  it  is  "  the  little  more  " 
which  is  so  all  important;  and  the  absolute 
reproduction  of  an  incident  or  an  object,  if 
such  a  feat  were  possible,  would  mean  some- 
thing very  like  failure. 

Also  the  painter  is  in  danger  of  seeing  too 

293 


£J)e  iiiustjtjj  of  Nature 

much.  He  half  closes  his  eyes  for  fear  of 
seeing  things  exactly  as  they  are.  He  would 
preserve  the  charm  of  atmosphere  at  all  costs. 
He  must  either  add  something  of  his  own  to 
the  canvas,  or  omit  the  minuteness  of  detail 
in  his  rendering  of  a  subject,  in  order  to  ar- 
rest the  air  and  the  illusion  of  nature.  But 
at  all  hazards  he  will  avoid  what  science 
would  count  the  truth.  Your  line  must  have 
just  sufficient  indecision  to  betray  (I  should 
say,  to  reveal)  the  human  hand  that  drew  it. 
For  this  is  the  touch  of  living  sympathy,  more 
important  than  the  dead  accuracy  of  the  ma- 
chine. To  transfer  to  canvas  or  print  some- 
thing of  the  vitality  of  the  original  is  the  first 
concern  of  the  craftsman,  the  more  nearly 
exact  the  better,  but  living  at  all  costs.  We 
are  apt  to  forget  that  the  circle  and  the  straight 
line  are  mathematical  fictions,  forms  of  speech 
which  have  been  approached  but  never  real- 
ized in  a  material  world.  For  to  apprehend 
absolute  perfection  is  not  given  to  man,  though 
he  be  a  prince  of  artists;  while  ever  to  strive 

294 


SUmosjJtjcrc 

after  that  apprehension  is  one  of  his  most 
delightful  joys.  The  pursuit  of  the  unattain- 
able is  the  piety  of  art. 

To  create  an  atmosphere,  to  produce  an 
illusion,  having  been  always  the  artist's  prime 
aim  and  most  elementary  need,  it  follows  that 
in  every  art  there  have  been  evolved  its  own 
peculiar  laws  which  facilitate  and  enforce 
that  object.  In  poetry,  for  instance,  versifica- 
tion, with  all  its  complex  beauty  of  rhythms 
and  metres,  helps  to  enshroud  the  theme  with 
atmosphere.  I  had  almost  said  that  versifica- 
tion provides  the  atmosphere.  For  although 
it  is  so  easy  to  be  hopelessly  banal  in  verse, 
there  must  still  cling  even  to  the  worst  poetry 
some  of  the  inalienable  charm  of  numbers.  A 
foreigner  at  least  might  hear  it  with  satisfac- 
tion. 

So  that  if  a  man  will  abandon  verse,  and 
betake  himself,  as  he  fondly  says,  to  the  free- 
dom of  prose,  he  will  find  the  burden  of  art 
laid  upon  him  more  than  twice  as  heavy  as 


295 


W§t  2tins1)i|)  of  Katttrt 

before.  He  is  cast  utterly  upon  his  own  re- 
sources, and  yet  the  obligations  of  his  art  are 
not  diminished  one  jot.  There  is  the  same  old 
tale  of  illusion  and  atmosphere  to  be  made  up, 
and  not  a  shred  of  material  in  stock.  One 
thinks  of  prose  as  the  simplest,  most  natural 
means  of  expression,  and  of  poetry  as  laboured 
in  comparison.  I  fancy,  however,  that  if  we 
could  interrogate  those  who  have  been  masters 
of  both  arts,  we  should  find  the  reverse  to  be 
true.  "  Prose  is  toil,"  they  would  say,  "  while 
poetry  is  play." 

At  all  events,  there  is  atmosphere  in  form; 
and  it  is  the  engrossing  business  of  the  artist 
to  manipulate  his  form,  to  humour  it,  to  coax 
it,  to  compel  it,  to  woo  it,  so  as  to  make  it  yield 
the  greatest  possible  amount  of  atmosphere  for 
his  purpose.  Tn  all  this  he  must  take  care 
to  call  to  his  aid  every  available  resource  of 
his  craft.  Tn  the  first  place  he  must  enlist  the 
sympathetic  help  of  words  by  using  them 
kindly  and  rightly  according  to  their  nature 


296 


and  genius,  and  as  they  belong,  and  not  antag- 
onize them  by  misapplication.  I  have  known 
writers  who  established  a  reputation  for  great 
cleverness  simply  by  the  misuse  of  words. 
Their  style  was  called  original.  It  was.  For 
pure  unmitigated  cruelty  to  our  tiny,  long- 
suffering  servants,  these  patient  words,  it  was 
unmatched.  Now  a  man  who  will  mutilate 
his  mother  tongue  merely  to  display  his  own 
agility  is  no  better  than  a  heathen.  It  is  so 
needless,  too.  For  to  the  generous  and  sedu- 
lous master,  what  revelations  of  undreamed 
beauty,  what  marvels  of  import,  will  not  words 
impart? 

I  would  not  speak  as  a  pedant,  nor  as  a 
dilettante,  on  this  topic,  but  only  as  a  sober 
bystander  in  this  great  gallery  of  art,  this 
lovely  world  which  we  are  permitted  to 
wander  through.  I  see  how  much  things  are 
enhanced  in  my  eyes  by  the  atmosphere  that 
surrounds  them ;  I  see  how  naked  and  poverty- 
stricken  they  appear  without  it;  and  I  say  to 
myself,  "  I  love  atmosphere,  in  art  and  in  life. 

>*7 


ED*  Irtnsijip  of  Katttre 

I  will  surround  myself  with  it,  whenever  I 
can  do  so  unselfishly.  And  if  I  were  an  artist 
of  any  sort,  it  is  atmosphere  that  I  should  seek 
first  of  all." 


THE    END. 


298 


AA    000  598  766    4 


